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Thirty-three members of the Korean Language Society, who survived
brutal torture by the Japanese police when they were imprisoned in
1942, were dismayed after they were freed in August 1945. Nobody knew
the whereabouts of the manuscript of a dictionary they were working on,
which was confiscated by the Japanese. They were afraid it might have
been burned. The ambitious project to write a Dictionary of the Korean Language
was first planned in 1929, when Japanese colonial policies in Korea
became harsher. The Committee for Korean Dictionary Compilation issued
a statement at the time of its formation which declared, ¡°Culture can
flourish only when language is put in order and standardized. The best
way to achieve this goal is to make a dictionary.¡± The Society for
Research in the Korean Language, a precursor to the Korean Language
Society, inherited this project in 1936. Its members were pupils of Ju
Shi-gyeong, a Korean linguist who taught that a country ceases to exist
the minute it loses its language. In 1933, a proposal for unified
Hangeul orthography was made. But the project came to a halt due to
Japanese oppression, and the manuscript was lost.
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Members of the the Korean Language Society at the time of completion of
the Grand Dictionary of the Korean Language on Oct. 9, 1957. |
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Then the miracle happened: in September 1945, the manuscript was found
in cargo storage at the Seoul Station, where it had been left when the
Japanese tried to send it to court as evidence for trial. Tears welled
up in the eyes of the members of the Society. It was like finding a
lost child. They published the first installment of the dictionary in
October 1947. When the Korean War broke out while they were still
working on publishing more dictionaries with paper and ink sponsored by
the U.S. Rockefeller Foundation, the members buried the manuscript in
the ground. Titled "the Grand Dictionary of the Korean Language", a
complete set of six volumes was finally published on Oct. 9, 1957,
Hangeul Day, after 28 years of labor. The dictionary, which contains
164,125 lexical entries and includes dialect, obsolete words, and
technical terms, was the first dictionary to be published since the
¡°Hunminjeongeum (Correct Sounds to Instruct the People)¡±, the Korean
writing system, was promulgated in 1446. Choi Hyeon-bae, president of
the Korean Language Society, in the preface wrote of his hope that the
dictionary would serve as a springboard for creating a new Korean
culture and enriching it. Twelve years after independence, Korea had
found true cultural independence. (englishnews@chosun.com )
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