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Projects

Dictionary Compilation Project

  • ·  In 1929, with 108 notable Korean figures from diverse fields participating as the sponsors, the Korean Dictionary Compilation Committee was organized and the Grand Dictionary of Korean compilation project was initiated to “establish farsighted policy by unifying the Korean people’s language and script.” While subsequently undergoing countless hardships including the Korean Language Society Persecution and the Korean War, it published the 6-volume Grand Dictionary of Korean from 1947 to 1957. The Grand Dictionary of Korean is the first Korean dictionary created by the Korean people and is the origin of all Korean dictionaries today.
  • ·  After completing the publication of the Grand Dictionary of Korean (6 vols.) on October 9, 1957, the Society decided to publish a medium-sized Korean dictionary that would be contemporaneous and practical, thus making convenient use possible for the general public. It created the Medium Dictionary of Korean Compilation Committee in November 1957 and published the Medium Dictionary of Korean, a medium-sized Korean dictionary of 1,757 pages, on June 18, 1958, seven months after the initiation of the dictionary compilation project.
  • ·  Following the publication of the Grand Dictionary of Korean and the Medium Dictionary of Korean, the Society felt the necessity of a small dictionary for the public and students of a new era and pursued the compilation of a small dictionary starting in September 1958. While the new volume was to be based on the Medium Dictionary of Korean, rarely used Sino-Korean words, obsolete institutional terms, rarely used words, and non-standard words were reduced as much as possible and, instead, new educational terms, diverse scientific terms, new institutional terms, universally necessary loanwords, and proper nouns were widely included, thus resulting in the publication of the Small Dictionary of Korean on April 30, 1960.
  • ·  There was a deluge of newly coined terms each year from diverse fields with social development, thus making it necessary to supplement and to revise the Medium Dictionary of Korean for the volume to be contemporary and practical. Because of such needs, a project for the compilation of a new dictionary was begun in May 1960, leading to the publication of the New Dictionary of Korean in 1965.
  • ·  Having compiled a large dictionary for the first time in the history of the compilation of Korean dictionaries, the Society compiled a variety of dictionaries for over 10 years following the completion and publication of its Grand Dictionary of Korean in 1957. However, because the manuscript of the Grand Dictionary of Korean had already accumulated contents requiring correction and addition over some 30 years, the Society came to plan a project for supplementarily compiling the Grand Dictionary of Korean. As a result, December 1991 to April 1992, the Grand Dictionary of Korean (Urimal Keun Sajeon) was published in a total of four volumes, with 450 thousand entry words, a 4 × 6 format, and 5,504 pages.
  • ·  The Society and the Korea University Research Institute for Language and Information signed a contract regarding the electronic entry (coding) of the Grand Dictionary of Korean (Urimal Keun Sajeon) in September 1994 and commissioned the production to Hancom, Inc., thus publishing the Grand Hangeul Dictionary of Korean (Hangeul Urimal Keun Sajeon), an electronic dictionary, in February 1996.
  • ·  In consideration of the importance of disappearing native Korean vocabulary, native Korean words were selected from the Grand Dictionary of Korean (Urimal Keun Sajeon) file, some of the definitions were supplemented, and the results were compiled into the Dictionary of Native Korean Words on December 15, 2001. The number of entry words amounted to approximately 130 thousand, and the dimensions were a 4 × 6 format and 2,136 pages.
  • ·  Approximately 150 thousand words with comparatively high frequency were selected from the Grand Dictionary of Korean (Urimal Keun Sajeon) file, their definitions were refined and supplemented, and the results were published as the Dictionary of Korean (Urimal Sajeon), a medium-sized dictionary, on December 29, 2005. The manufacturer was Geulnarae, and the dimensions were a 5 × 7 format and 2,728 pages.