This was definitely the case in South Korea during the late 1970s. Not long after that, though, South Korea essentially switched to writing in 한글 (Hangul) only, with an occasional Chinese character (known as 한자 Hanja) when absolutely necessary in printed publications. Students are still required to learn a standard set 1,800 characters through middle and high school. In daily life, though, you rarely encounter people using Hanja for anything other than their name on official documents (name in Hanja for official documents, name in Hangul for everything else). For North Korean students, they must know 3,000 Hanja before attending university.
Here is an example of a major Korean newspaper’s site. There is no Chinese character other than to select the site’s Chinese language edition. When I first lived in Korea in the late 1970s, the newspaper was mostly in Hanja with Hangul used, as in Japanese, for particles and native words not derived from Chinese. Here is a major Japanese news organization’s site showing how Japanese is written today.
