> For example 부동산(real estate), comes from the Japanese kanji word, 不動産, which in Chinese means 不(not)動(moving)産(assets). Does this inferential aspect of Chinese still apply in certain cases once it is written in Hangul?
It depends. For this particular example, I think most Koreans will treat 부동산 as a single word meaning "real estate", because it's not a very productive combination: the alternative 동산 (moveable properties?) is a legal term which is much less common, and 산(産) as "property" isn't common either.
On the other hand, a word like 고밀도화(高密度化 - densification) is transparently decomposable to 고(高 high) + 밀도(密度 density) + 화(化 -ify). Few people can write it down in hanja (I just copy-pasted from dictionary), but most people will immediately recognize its meaning, even if they've never seen the word before.
That example is interesting. The Japanese word for real estate, 不動産, actually came from French [1], 'immobilier' (real estate, by opposition to what is movable or 'mobile' such as 'meubles' or 'mobilier', i.e. furniture). And of course the French word comes from Latin...
The Japanese would treat the whole combination as a single word (in my experience) and wouldn't analyse the components either (although 'they make sense').
The etymology is often more apparent in Japanese and Chinese thanks to the characters, whereas it's not always easy to see it in other language (unless you speak Latin or Greek..). But this is a borrowed word and in this particular case it's very intuitive to French speakers as immobilier / mobilier / mobile are all common words.
I think this answers part of my question as how modern Korean create new words/concepts, if not via English loanwords. So those word roots could still be applied in certain cases.
It depends. For this particular example, I think most Koreans will treat 부동산 as a single word meaning "real estate", because it's not a very productive combination: the alternative 동산 (moveable properties?) is a legal term which is much less common, and 산(産) as "property" isn't common either.
On the other hand, a word like 고밀도화(高密度化 - densification) is transparently decomposable to 고(高 high) + 밀도(密度 density) + 화(化 -ify). Few people can write it down in hanja (I just copy-pasted from dictionary), but most people will immediately recognize its meaning, even if they've never seen the word before.