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

<People’s> Republic of China officially uses Latin alphabet in their official phonetic alphabet called Pinyin. Here’s a sample:

 Zhùyīn fúhào

Ignore the accent marks, they are tone marks. Pinyin appears on highway signs in big cities for people who can’t read the characters (or can’t read them fast enough.) Also, many Chinese use Pinyin to type characters into their mobile phones: Sugo Pinyin or Google Pinyin are popular.

Taiwan uses the same phonetic system but did not adopt the Latin Alphabet. Here’s an example:

ㄓㄨˋ　ㄧㄣ　ㄈㄨˊ　ㄏㄠˋ

So I wouldn’t quite say the Chinese “don’t use Latin Alphabet.” Many mainland Chinese do use Latin Alphabet or at least see it quite a bit in daily life.

Edit: There is a Latin letter based version of South Korean writing! That one, however, nobody likes. The Korean Alphabet called Hangul was designed to be easy to learn and read so everyone prefers Hangul. I taught myself the basics in 30 minutes. I don’t speak Korean. However, in Seoul and other big cities on subways and stuff, you will also see the Latin Alphabet used to help foreigners out. So, many Koreans will also see Latin Alphabet quite a bit in daily life.

Here is Hangul and Romanized, saying the same thing:

한글이 좋다/hangeul-i johda