CJK characters
Chinese is written almost exclusively in Chinese characters. It requires over 3,000 characters for general literacy, but up to 40,000 characters for reasonably complete coverage. Japanese uses fewer characters — general literacy in Japanese can be expected with 1,945 characters. The use of Chinese characters in Korea is becoming increasingly rare, although idiosyncratic use of Chinese characters in proper names requires knowledge (and therefore availability) of many more characters. However, even today, students in South Korea are taught 1,800 characters.
Second round of simplified Chinese characters
Also released in 1964 was a directive for further simplification in order to improve literacy, with the goal of eventually reducing the number of strokes in commonly used characters to ten or fewer. This was to take place gradually, with consideration for both "ease of production [writing] and ease of recognition [reading]." In 1975, a second round of simplifications, the Second Scheme, was submitted by the Script Reform Committee of China to the State Council for approval. Like the First Scheme, it contained two lists, one (comprising 248 characters) for immediate use and another (comprising 605 characters) for evaluation and discussion. Of these, 21 from the first list and 40 from the second also served as components of other characters, which caused the Second Scheme to modify some 4,500 characters. On 20 December 1977, major newspapers such as the "People's Daily" and the "Guangming Daily" published the second-round simplifications along with editorials and articles strongly endorsing the changes. Both newspapers began to use the characters from the first list on the following day.