For what I know, Hangul "glyphs" provide consistent encoding (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Featural_alphabet).
In Japanese Kanji the "elements" (Radicals, or Bushu, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_%28Chinese_characters%2...) do _often_ work as semantic indicators (see for example Radical 85: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_85 which usually implies some connection with water or other liquids) but the connection may be obscure, or even look random - as an example (among hundreds) see 淋 where the radical for water, followed by two "tree" radicals means: "lonely, deserted, abandoned".
Something like "this large brushy swoop here is the part where all those matrices on the left are reduced, and then on the right we have these leafy things that map them into coordinates"...
Imagine you're handed a tablet that shows such a program. At first glance it's a unique calligraphic image, but when you know the language you can also parse the data flow and manipulated types intuitively upon seeing the shapes. And since it's a dynamic digital document, you could zoom in, isolate parts, or even run "live coding" style experiments to see what the painting actually does.