why do countries such as South Korea and China have latin numbers and letters on their license plates when their language doesn’t use them?

Question

Edit: Latin letters and numbers might not be the right word. I meant letters such as AaBbCc and numbers such as 123.

In: 3829

Answer 1

Arabic numerals (0123456789) are used pretty much universally throughout the world for these types of things. It is for the same reason the USA doesn’t use the words “one” or “eight” on license plates.

In South Korea (where I’m living right now), they don’t use the english alphabet on their license plates. They use Hangeul (the korean alphabet). It is also phonetic and serves the same purpose.

I can not speak to Chinese license plates, but if they do use the english alphabet, then it is probably because Chinese does not use a phonetic alphabet. Therefore it makes sense to use the english alphabet.

Japanese also has a phonetic alphabet they can use (Hiragana). It looks like they use that on their license plates and not the english alphabet or Kanji.

Edit: You do see the english alphabet used in various other registrations, though. This will almost certainly be true for any information that might need to be valid internationally or on international software. Passport numbers, IDs, driver licenses, postal reference codes, etc. As near as I can tell, that is simply due to the dominance of english in international communication.

Edit 2: Another commenter on this post pointed out the Geneva conventions on road traffic, which specify license plates requirements for vehicles to travel between countries. These requirements include the use of Arabic numerals and Latin characters. However, South Korea and Japan are both effectively islands and don’t need to worry about cars in their country driving across the border into other countries. China is not a signatory to these conventions.