Regardless the number of characters required for understanding the headlines, I think my points are still valid. After several thousands years of using Chinese characters Korean found that it's not intuitive for literacy hence they invented their very own alphabet namely Hangul, and voila the literacy increased considerably.

Fun facts, as a foreigner, you can learn to read Hangul in one single day, and then you can read the Korean written words for names, sign boards, etc but to understand them you need to learn the Korean language. However, if your mother tongue is Korean, you can understand them intuitively. That's the reason I considered alphabet is more important than invention of the wheels and it's truly the original "bicycle of the mind".