JTC1/SC2/WG2 N 2170
DATE: 2000-02-10

THE TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATION OF THE PROPOSAL TO
AMEND THE KOREAN CHARACTER PART OF ISO/IEC 10646-1
TO BE PROPOSED BY D.P.R. OF KOREA AT 38TH MEETING OF
ISO/JIC1/SC2/WG2This proposal is limited to the addition and rearrangement of some of the
Korean character part of ISO/IEC 10646-1(UCS2).
There exist several different coded character sets for Korean language
which have been adopted as national standards by 3 ISO members, D.P.R
of Korea, the South Korea and P.R of China.
And several other code sets for Korean language are adopted and used asindustrial standards.
These code sets differ in the arrangement and the number of characters.
This is due to the features of the Korean character in use.
It is contradictory to the fairness and scientific nature of the standard andthe idea of ISO/IEC 10646-1 to satisfy one existing standard when there'realready several different encoding standards for Korean characters.
There fore, to include a more reasonable Korean coded character set in
ISO/IEC 10646-1 in the aspect of technical points and relation with all theexisting Korean coded character sets, proves to be an urgent matter inrealizing the universality of code sets and the world wide smooth
information interchange and improving the actual usage efficiency of thecode sets.

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Date: 2000-02-10

Regarding those above, the committee for standardization of the D.P.R of
Korea proposed the technical amendment of the Korean character part of
ISO/IEC 10646-1(UCS2).
1) The explanation about the proposal to rearrange the order of the
Korean characters.
The arrangement order of Korean character in the document ISO
10646-1(UCS2) is as followings:
The order of the initial consonants¤¡,¤¯,¤¢,¤£,¤°,¤¤,¤¥,¤¦,¤±,¤§,¤²,¤¨,¤©,¤³,¤ª,¤«,¤¬,¤-,¤®
The order of the medial vowel¤¤´,¤¾,¤µ,¤¿,¤¶,¤À,¤µ,¤¿,¤¶,¤À,¤·,¤Á,¤¸,¤Å,¤Ç,¤Â,¤¹,¤º,¤Æ,¤È,¤Ã,¤»,¤¼,¤Ä,¤½
The order of the final consonants¤¡,¤¯,¤É,¤¢,¤Ê,¤Ë,¤£,¤¤,¤Ì,¤Í,¤Î,¤Ï,¤Ð,¤Ñ,¤Ò,¤¥,¤¦,¤Ó,¤§,¤²,¤¨¤©,¤ª,¤«,¤¬,¤-,¤®
This arrangement order is the same with of KSC 5601.
But the arrangement order in KPS 9566-97 and GB 12052-89 is asfollows.
The order of the initial consonants:¤¡,¤¢,¤£,¤¤,¤¥,¤¦,¤§,¤©,¤ª,¤«,¤¬,¤-,¤®,¤¯,¤°,¤±, ¤²,¤³,¤¨The order of the medial vowels:¤´,¤µ,¤¶,¤·,¤¸,¤¹,¤º,¤»,¤¼,¤½,¤¾,¤¿,¤À,¤Á,¤Â,¤Ã,¤Ä,¤Å,¤Æ,¤Ç,¤¤ÈÈThe order of the final consonants:¤¡¡¤¤É¡¤¤¢¡¤¤Ê¡¤¤Ë¡¤¤£¡¤¤¤¡¤¤Ì¡¤¤Í¡¤¤Î¡¤¤Ï¡¤¤Ð¡¤¤Ñ¤Ò¡¤¤¥¡¤¤¦¡¤¤
Ó¡¤¤§¡¤¤¨¡¤¤©¡¤¤ª¡¤¤«¡¤¤¬¡¤¤-¡¤¤®¡¤¤¯¤²
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Date: 2000-02-10

The 2 arrangement orders of characters above differ from each othermainly in the order of conjoining characters and that by and large
derived from the different views over the number of main Koreanalphabets.
The number of the Korean alphabets were 28 when the"HunminJeongum" was created and, later, 24 since the 4 letters of“¢æ”, “¤Õ”, “¤Ö”, “¡¢” became unavailable.
And then, with the development of the language five conjoining
consonants of "¤¯","¤°","¤±"."¤²","¤³" and eleven conjoining vowels"¤¾","¤¿","¤À","¤Á","¤Â","¤Ã","¤Ä","¤Å","¤Æ","¤Ç","¤È"settled downin the literal life and there're now 40 Korean alphabets.
Only when the arrangement order of alphabets were exactly determined,
the syllabic character can be clearly arranged.
This is also required in the arrangement order of Korean characters(1100-11FF) in ISO 10646-1(UCS 2) which considers even theexpression of ancient characters, and here, the same arranging principal
should be applied at the same time.
A character is, in all cases, a morphological symbol of a language so it
would be suitable to handle the characters on the basis of morphologicalprinciple and in that respect, it would be of nature to follow the order ofarranging the 24 basic alphabets at first, which is flowed by the 2alphabet-conjoining characters and then 3.
This order also conforms to the historical habit of arranging theconsonants before the vowels or arranging the 24 basic alphabets at
front.

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Date: 2000-02-10

That means that a Korean wherever he lives in the world is accustomed
to the order of¤¡,¤¢,¤£,¤¤,¤¥,¤¦,¤§,¤¨,¤©,¤ª,¤«,¤¬,¤-,¤®,¤´,¤µ,¤¶,¤·,¤¸,¤¹,¤¤º,¤»,¤¼,¤½½
But the arrangement order of Korean characters in KSC 5601 which issatisfied by the ISO 10646-1(UCS2) brings the imbalance between thelanguage and its writing habit of those who are now to the KSC5601
and thus producing a lot of mental burden and economic loss.
By comparison, the character order in KPS 9566-97 and GB 12052-89
is advantageous
But for the impartial and scientific completion and application of the
Korean character order in ISO 10646-1(UCS2), it is desirable toresearch a perfect arrangement order to be agreed and applied.
(From 1994 to 1996 the Korean scholars from north, south Korean andabroad discussed about the rule of Korean character arranging order anddecided to apply the agreed arrangement order in ISO 10646-1(UCS2)
but it is a pity that there is not any realistic result until (now).
Such differences in the Korean character orders causes the different
encoding representation (code value) of individual syllabic and thus
confusion and difficulty in the information interchange.
It is an important matter to settle this problem fairly and as fast as
possible to ensure the authority of ISO 10646-1 Unicode 2.0 as aninternational code standard.
2) The explanation of the proposal to unify the description of the Korean
character name.

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Date: 2000-02-10

Korean character that has been developed from “Hummimjongum”
began to be called as “Hangul” from early 1900s.
But in recent years, the “Hangul” is misunderstood as the charactername that is used in South Korea not the Korean character name.
In general a national language or character bears a name of its nation. It
is kind of a custom,
In ISO 639-88 the code for language name representation, the North andSouth Korea both represents the name of Korean character as Korean.
And in ISO/IEC TR 11941-96 Transliteration of Korean script in toLatin Characters, both the North and South Korea represents the Korean
character as “Korean script”.
On the other hand, the Korean alphabet is represented as Korean
character in the English version of Chinese national standard GB
12052-89 the catalogue of Korean character code for informationinterchange.
There fore, in this document, we propose to replace the expression“Hangul” with “Korean character” and “Jamo” with “Korean
Alphabet”.
This amendment is expected to be suitable for the worldwide
recognition and identification of Korean character.
3) The explanation of the proposal to add some special symbolic characters
in KPS 9566-97 to the appropriate position in ISO 10646-1(UCS2)
79 special symbolic characters in KPS 9566-97 (not included in ISO
10646-1(UCS2)) are shown in the following.

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Date: 2000-02-10

1. ’ A1C1
2. ¡À A1C0
3. ¡Â A1C2
4. ¡¼ A1C3
5. ¡Å A1C5
6. ¡Ü A1DC
7. ¡Ý A1DD
8. ¡Á A1DE
9. ¡ß A1DF
10. ¡à A1E0
11. ¡á A1E1
12. ¢ñ A2F1
13. ¢ò A2F2
14. ¢ó A2F3
15. ¢ô A2F4
16. ¢õ A2F5
17. ¢ö A2F6
18. ¤è A4E8
19. ¤é A4E9
20. ¤ê A4EA
21. ¤ë A4EB
22. ¤ì A4EC
23. ¤í A4ED
24. §µ A7B5
25. §¶ A7B6
26. §· A7B7
27. §¸ A7B8
28. §¹ A7B9
29. §º A7BA

30. §» A7BB
31. §¼ A7BC
32. §½ A7BD
33. §¾ A7BE
34. §ú A7FA
35. §û A7FB
36. §ü A7FC
37. §ý A7FD
38. §þ A7FE
39. ¨¦
A8A6
40. ¨¸
A8B8
41. ¨¹A8B9
42. ¨ºA8BA
43. ¨ß A8DF
41. ¨à A8E0
45. ¨ñ A8F1
46. ¨÷ A8F7
47. ¨ú Ú A8FA
48. ¨û
A8FB
49. ¬¡ ACA1
50. ¬¢ ACA2
51. ¬¦ ACA6
52. ¬© ACA9
53. ¬ª ACAA
54. ¬Ý ACDD
55. ¬ß ACDF
56. ¬à ACE0
57. ¬º ACBA
58. ¬» ACBB
Page 659. ¬¼ ACBC
60. ¬½ ACBD
61. ¬À ACC062. ¬Á ACC1
63. ¬Â ACC2
64. ¬Ã ACC3
65. ¬Ä ACC4
66. ¬Å ACC5
67. ¬Æ ACC6
68. ¬Ç ACC7
69. ¬È ACC8
70. ¬É ACC971. ¬Ï ACCF
72. ¬Ò ACD2
73. ¬Ô ACD4
74. ¬Ö ACD6
75. ¬× ACD7
76. ¬Ø ACD8
77. ¬Ù ACD978. ¬Ú ACDA
79. ¬Ü ACDC

Date: 2000-02-10

The symbolic characters above are now widely used in the electronic
publication and application of database in D.P.R of Korea.
The reasons of the usage of these symbolic characters are:Firstly, it is better for them to be printed and screen displayed as one
symbolic character and they're now widely used in D.P.R. of Korea
according to KPS 9566-97 where the symbolic characters are specified.
Secondly the users are accustomed to its usage"¤è¤é¤ê" and "¤ë¤ì¤í" are pictorial characters making an aesthetic
shape when the 2 3-character-compounds are made respectively, not for
any inscription of pronunciation.
Those symbolic characters have been used in a great deal of publication
and almost every language processing software has got the function ofprocessing the symbolic characters in D.P.R of Korea.
Thus we propose to add such special symbolic characters to theappropriate position in ISO 10646-1(UCS2) through necessary practicalprocedures.
4) The explanation about the proposal to add to the CJK Unified
Ideographs code table of ISO 10646-1 the encoding representations
corresponding to each ideographs (Korean HanJa) in KPS 9566-97 andpublish it and to add Korean HanJa to HanJa extended area C on thesecond plane of ISO 10646-2.
(1)

At present, the column for G,T, J,K,V contains the example of Hanja
from the original standard of character sets and at the same time its
encoding representation.

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Date: 2000-02-10

We expect to insert to the item for Korean HanJa the encoding
representation of HanJa of K.P.R of Korea, identified on the basis of
KPS 9566-97 and the HanJa extended set of KPS.
Example: the detailed item of code table for the CJK unified
Ideographs.

Row CellHex code
078/000
4E00

C
G-Hanzi-TJkanji

0-523B 1-4421 0-306C
0-5027 1-3601 0-1676
(2)

K
Hanja

0-6C69 0-FCD6
0-7673 0-9254

We propose to register the Korean Hanja in the extended area C in
addition to the HanJa in the extended area B of the BasicMultilingual Plane and the second plane.
With respect to this, we intend to follow the necessary procedures of
IRG, and hope the close corporation with IRG.
In addition to the proposals above, we submit the following
proposals.
§¡ The proposal to supplement to the Ridu and Gugyol character usedhistorically in our country.
The Ridu and Gugyol characters are similar to Han character in theirforms but are independent characters distinguished from HanJa
fundamentally.

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These characters were used to represent Korean language or to read
"Hamum" in Korean style and are now widely used in the study ofhistory and culture, So they have a great cultural value.
The number of these characters is about 300¡-400 respectively andthe studies to determine their correct arrangement order and character
number are now intensified.
§¢ The proposal about the transliteration of Korean script in to Latincharacters.
Two methods for the transliteration of Koran script in to Latincharacters were proposed in ISO/IEC TR 11941-96 but in the table 35 and
36 of ISO 10646-1:2000, only one method is applied unilaterally.
So we consider it desirable to apply both the 2 methods in ISO/IEC
TR 11941-96 or not to apply to avoid any confusion until any one of themethods is adopted as the standard.
The transliteration method of Korean script in to Latin characters is
one of very important matters to be agreed as soon as possible.
As the technical problems above are related with a national language,
we hope the attentive efforts of ISO/IEC JIC1/SC2/WG2 for the impartial
and perfect solution of the problems and we are ready to corporate with
WG2
References:Document N2056 ofWG2
The NP submitted to subcommittee 2 by the committee forstandardization of D.P.R of Korea.

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Attachment to JTC1/SC2/WG2 N 2170
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 2/WG2PROPOSAL SUMMARY FORM TO ACCOMPANY SUBMISSIONSFOR ADDITONS TO THE REPERTOIRE OF ISO/IEC10646

Please fill all the sections A, B and C below
A. Administrative
1. Title:
Addition of 79 symbolic characters
2. Requesters name: The Committee for Standardization of D.P.R of Korea
3. Requester type (Member body/Liaison/Individual contribution): NB
4. Submission date: 2000-02-10
5. Requesters reference (if applicable):
6. (Choose one the following):
This is complete proposal: Yes
More information will be provided later:
B: Technical-General
1. (Choose one the following:)
a. This proposal is for a new script (set of characters): No
b. The proposal is for addition of character(s) to an existing block: Yes
Name of the existing block:
2. Number of characters in proposal: 79
3. Proposed category (see section ¦â, Character Categories): A
4. Proposed Level of Implementation (see clause 15, ISO/IEC 10646-1): 3
Is a rationale provided for the choice?
If “Yes”, reference:
5. Is a repertoire including character names provided?
Yesa. If YES, are the names in accordance with the ”character naming guidelines”
In Annex K of ISO/IEC 10646-1?
Yes
b. Are the character shapes attached in a reviewable form?
Yes
6. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font (ordered preference: True type,
Postscript or 96*96 bit-mapped format) for publishing the standard?
Korean Computer Centre
If available now, identity source(s) for the font (include address, e-mail, ftp-site, etc.)
and indicate the tools used: Korean Computer Centre
7. References:a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts etc,) provided?
Yesb. Are published examples (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, orOther sources) of use of proposed characters attached?
Yes
8. Special encoding issues:
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Date: 2000-02-10

Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing (if applicable) such as input,
presentation, sorting, searching, indexing, transliteration etc. (if yes please enclose information)?
C. Technical-Justification:
1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before? No
If YES explain
2. Has contact been made to members of the user community (for example: National Body,
user groups of the script or characters, other experts, etc.)?
If YES, with whom?
If YES, available relevant documents?
3. Information on the user community for the proposed characters (for example: size,
demographics, information technology use, or publishing use) is included?
Reference:
4. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare)
Reference:
Common5. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
If YES, where? Reference: Document Editing, Database application, Desktop print
6. After giving due considerations to the principles in “Principles and Procedures” document (aWG2 standing document) must the proposed characters be entirely in the BMP?
Yes
IF YES, is a rationale provided?
Yes
IF YES, reference: Enclosed
7. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range (rather than being
scattered)?
No
8. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation form of an existing
character or character sequence?
No
If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
If YES, reference:
9. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar (in appearance or function)
to an existing character?
Yes
If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
If YES, reference: Enclosed
10. Does the proposal include use of combining characters and/or use of composite sequences(see clauses 4.11 and 4.13 in ISO/IEC 10646-1)?
If YES, is a rationale for such use provided?
If YES, reference:
Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images (graphic symbols)
provided?
If YES, reference:
11. Does the proposal contain characters with any special properties such as control function orsimilar semantics?
If YES, describe in detail (include attachment if necessary)

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Date: 2000-02-10