On the other hand, Korean ditched the ideographic Hanja (Chinese Character) writing system because it was too difficult to learn, in favour of a much simpler phonetic one. In Japan, the classical Kanji Chinese writing system was considered a prestige language and was customarily not taught to ordinary folks; the modern Hiragana script evolved as an easy-to-learn alternative, (initially) used heavily by women who were often not taught Kanji.

Of course, Chinese characters are not pictographic and haven't been for a few thousand years, but they are still largely ideographic.

> having their literacy degenerate to such an extent that they stop using alphabetic / phonetic writing systems and revert to pictographic or ideographic systems

What about reverting to referencing moving pictures?

Or was this intended to be self-referential and I missed the joke? :)