When some form of phonetic writing is developed, it's almost invariably syllabic. If anything, the very intuitiveness of syllabaries is why all alphabets, abjads, and abugida originate from a single source while there are many syllabaries that have developed independently.
Further, Hangul is not "syllabic". It's an alphabet. It happens to organise its letters into syllable blocks, but that's it.
That's what I'm saying, after several thousands years of using Chinese characters Korean found that it's not intuitive for literacy hence they invented their very own alphabet, and voila the literacy increased considerably. Actually as a foreigner, you can learn to read Hangul in one single day, and then you can read the Korean for names, sign boards, etc but to understand them is another story. 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".