Most academic terms in Koreaโmath, science, medicine, lawโare made up of Hanja (Chinese character) compounds.
Even in middle and high school, you run into tons of Hanja terms. If you've absorbed enough Hanja through study, memorizing new vocab becomes a lot smoother.
For example, if you're memorizing 'So-yeom-jin-tong-je' (anti-inflammatory analgesic): You can guess 'So' means remove, 'Yeom'โeven if you're not 100% sureโprobably means flame/inflammation, 'Jin' means to calm, and 'Tong' means pain. So you can memorize it as a drug that gets rid of inflammation and calms the pain.
Once you study enough Hanja and it becomes second nature, you can use it to hack vocab. Even if you don't know the exact term, you can mobilize your Hanja knowledge to piece together a meaning for memorization.
You don't really need to learn how to actually *write* the characters anymore, but just being able to read the meaning and sound helps immensely when studying other fieldsโunless all Korean academic terms suddenly switch to English.
"Users are debating whether Hanja is a 'cheat code' for vocabulary or a waste of time compared to just reading more books. Everyone agrees it's a huge 'booster' for learning Japanese and Chinese, though!"
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