mikezilla! sorry it took so long to read your post. Yes, you are right, the Chinese characters both reflect the transmission of the game and the fact that Hangul wasn't created until the 1500s by King Sejong to stop the Sinofication of Korea. Before that, all Koreans wrote Korean using Chinese characters. As for the details of games and variants, I really didn't get into it at that level, just playing fellow university students who were fairly ignorant about all except the basic forms, like me, and should've been studying instead. Again, like me. I have yet to see a non-octagonal changgi set too.