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Projects

Publication Projects

  • ·  Academic journal Hangeul
    Hangeul is the oldest Korean-language magazine worldwide. It was launched in February 1927 as a coterie magazine by those who aimed at a professional journal devoted to the Korean language and script. Although it was soon terminated, the publication was reborn in May 1932 as the official bulletin of the Society.
      During 1932-34, Hangeul faithfully devoted itself to the project of standardizing Korean orthography, which was the Society’s most urgent task. Indeed, the magazine allocated its entire space to the development of orthographic theories, gathering opinions, expanding public understanding, and disseminating the Unified Korean Orthography. While it had some aspects of a professional journal, the publication became a highly popular magazine by the stage of actually disseminating the Unified Korean Orthography.
       During 1935-42, Hangeul served as a medium playing a variety of functions such as the promotion and coverage of problems related to the Korean language and script, public education, collection of diverse words, and presentation of research papers. Though its nature was that of a popular culture magazine with a focus on Korea, the publication nevertheless maintained the basic line of compiling Korean dictionaries.
       The Society had to undergo a dark age of some three years due to the Korean Language Society Persecution and could not avoid the circumstances of the times facing the Korean people from immediately after the Liberation to before the Korean War. With a focus on the Korean language and script, Hangeul devoted considerable space to arousing the people’s national awareness, eradicating Japanese words, and discussing the exclusion of Chinese characters from writing. Though it was somewhat equipped with the features of a professional journal on Korean linguistics in both form and content, the publication overall was a strongly popular culture magazine.
    Although its publication was once again interrupted for 4-5 years due to the Korean War, Hangeul reverted to being a professional magazine on Korean linguistics as the hostilities ended and the social environment stabilized somewhat. Most of the journal’s pages were filled with papers and materials related to Korean linguistics. By completing the dictionary compilation project, begun as a national independence movement, in June 1958 after 30 years, the Society was able to establish an environment conducive to Hangeul’s performance of its original duties as a professional magazine. Hangeul thus consolidated its nature and position as a journal devoted to Korean linguistics through the 1960s.
       In September 1972, the Society met with an occasion for a leap with the foundation of the Hangeul Newsletter. All articles related to language movements and language policy were relegated to this newsletter, and Hangeul consolidated its position as a professional magazine dealing only with research papers. Published as a quarterly since 1979, the journal has published an average of 6-7 outstanding papers in each issue.
       Since 1991, the Society has implemented the Outstanding Paper Prize system, where, from among academic papers published in Hangeul, outstanding ones are selected and research grants are awarded. Currently, two scholars receive this prize every year. After becoming a candidate for registration with the National Research Foundation of Korea in 1998 and being selected as a registered journal in 2004, Hangeul published the 313th volume on September 30, 2016, thus growing into a professional magazine on Korean linguistics representative of Korea and the Korean people and unrivalled around the globe.

  • · Monthly Hangeul Newsletter:
    The Hangeul Newsletter was born in September 1972 as a newsletter in charge of the practical aspect of the Society’s activities. Despite a difficult financial situation, it has been published each month for 44 years, without any exception, up to September 2016 (no. 530). The publication has hitherto functioned both as a culture magazine disseminating knowledge of the Korean language and script and as a movement newsletter spreading the Society’s arguments and presenting the correct path for language policy and has established itself as a popular magazine with readers and contributors in all walks of life. Containing a wealth of diverse information and data and focusing on the language and script movement and language policy, it can be called a treasure trove indispensable to tracing the history of the language and script movement and language policy in Korea and gauging their future paths.