I'm in South Korea to attend #ismir2025, and after wandering around Seoul for a day, looking at signs, I think I've learned to read Korean, without learning any words!
I remember being told once that Hangul, the system for writing Korean, was designed to be easy to learn, with symbols illustrating how the mouth is positioned to make the corresponding sound. I'm not sure; I haven't checked, and seeing how much I can learn just by looking at bilingual station signs has become a game I'm playing.
