The story of Richard Sears or "Uncle Hanzi"

[soryang]

9. of course

but they are just to cumbersome for everyday use compared to alphabets. Koreans used them for several hundred years if not longer. But only the upper class had the time to become literate. The government ultimately decided they were a barrier to commerce. Some professionals in South Korea learn up to five thousand characters for scholarly purposes.

If I was studying Mandarin as a language for actual use, i would have to learn them. Most of the time, i refer to hanja as roots in Korean the same way i think of latin in English. After the learning the most common roots sometimes it helps to understand less common vocabulary words without having to use the dictionary. I'm not going to live long enough to learn thousands of characters.