Ideographic Research Group

(ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2/IRG)

 

Convenor: Ken LUNDE (小林剣)  •  Chief Editor: CHEN Zhuang (陈壮)  •  IWDS Editor: Yi BAI (白易)  •  ORT Manager: Henry CHAN (陳輝恒)

Latest Document Register  •  Principles and Procedures (Version 17)  •  UCV & NUCV Lists  •  IRG Working Document Series  •  IDS Database  •  Latest Code Charts  •  Unihan Database Lookup (UAX #38)  •  Ideographic Variation Database (UTS #37)  •  UTC CJK & Unihan Working Group

The Ideographic Research Group (IRG) is a subgroup of Working Group 2 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2) of Subcommittee 2 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2) of Joint Technical Committee 1 (ISO/IEC JTC 1) under ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). The IRG is primarily tasked by WG 2 to develop and review Han ideograph (aka Chinese character) repertoires that consist of submissions from member bodies and liaison organizations. These repertoires are referred to as IRG working sets, which eventually become encoded and harmonized across both the ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Coded Character Set) standard and the Unicode Standard as new CJK Unified Ideographs extension blocks. The IRG also accepts and reviews other documents that deal with Han ideographs, such as Urgently Needed Character (UNC) proposals, horizontal extension proposals, disunification proposals, and representative glyph change proposals.

Upcoming Meetings

The IRG meets twice a year. The Spring meeting is virtual (Webex), and the Fall meeting is hybrid, which requires a host. If there is no host, the meeting shall be virtual. The following are the upcoming meetings in chronological order:

Meeting	Location	Dates	First Call	Logistics	Schedule & Agenda	Registration Deadline	Document Submission Deadline
64	Virtual (Webex)	2025-03-17/21	IRG N2752	N/A	IRG N2755	2025-02-28	2025-02-28
65	Guangzhou, China — hybrid	2025-10-13/17		IRG N2754		2025-09-19	2025-09-26
66	Virtual (Webex)	2026-03-16/20		N/A		2026-02-27	2026-02-27
67	seeking host	TBD				TBD	TBD

The Past IRG Meetings Summary page provides a summary of past IRG meetings.

Participation

IRG meetings are attended by experts appointed by member bodies, along with individual experts. The table below lists the active and inactive IRG member bodies:

Active	Inactive
China	Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)
Hong Kong SAR (ITCHKSAR)	Japan
Macao SAR	Malaysia
Republic of Korea (ROK)	Singapore
SAT Daizōkyō Text Database Committee (SAT)
Taipei Computer Association (TCA)
The Unicode Consortium (UTC)
United Kingdom (UK)
United States (US)
Vietnam

IRG Working Sets

The following table lists the recent IRG working sets in reverse chronological order with links to their Online Review Tools (ORTs), their status, their corresponding CJK Unified Ideographs extension blocks (if standardized), and the submissions from IRG member bodies:

Working Set	Status	Block	Submitters
2024	Version 1.0 under review — see table below	TBD	China, ROK, SAT, TCA, UK, UTC, Vietnam
2021	Accepted for Unicode Version 17.0 (2025)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J	China, ROK, SAT, TCA, UK, UTC, Vietnam
2017	Standardized in Unicode Version 15.0 (2022)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H	China, ROK, SAT, TCA, UK, UTC, Vietnam
2015	Standardized in Unicode Version 13.0 (2020)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G	China, ROK, SAT, TCA, UK, UTC

IRG Working Set 2024 Review Assignments & Schedule

Version	Serial Number Range	Assignees	Comments Due	Responses Due	Font Proofs
1.0	00001 – 01169	China & SAT	2024-09-20	2024-10-18	China, ROK, SAT, TCA, UK, UTC, Vietnam
	01170 – 02333	ROK & TCA
	02334 – 03503	UK & UTC
	03504 – 04674	Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Macao SAR & Vietnam

Accessing Older IRG Documents

It will take considerable time and effort to migrate older IRG documents to the new IRG document register. The migration, which will be done incrementally, is expected to be done in reverse chronological order. To access older IRG documents, use the previous IRG home page, which will no longer be updated. If, for any reason, the previous IRG home page goes down or is otherwise unavailable, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine is an alternate way to access older IRG documents.

History

The CJK Joint Research Group (CJK-JRG), which was established in 1990, was charged with developing the original CJK Unified Ideographs block that included 20,902 Han ideographs in the range U+4E00 through U+9FA5. The Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) was formed on 1993-05-28 per Resolution 3 (WG 2 Ideographic Rapporteur Group) on page one of document SC 2 N2466 (Resolutions of 4th JTC 1/SC 2 Plenary Meeting held in Athens on May 27–28, 1993). The title of IRG Rapporteur was changed to IRG Convenor in 2018. The IRG acquired its current name, Ideographic Research Group, on 2019-06-21 per Recommendation M68.17 (IRG Name Change) on page four of document WG 2 N5054 (Recommendations from WG 2 meeting 68), which was instigated by document IRG N2381 (Jenkins & Lunde) and Recommendation IRG M52.12 (Renaming of IRG) on page four of document IRG N2360. The table below lists the history of the IRG Convenors and IRG Rapporteurs in reverse chronological order:

Years	IRG Convenor	IRG Rapporteur
2024–present	Ken LUNDE (小林剣)
2018–2024	LU Qin (陸勤)
2004–2018		LU Qin (陸勤)
1995–2004		ZHANG Zhoucai (张轴材)
1994/5		KIDO Akio (木戸彰夫)
1993/4		KATO Shigenobu (加藤重信)

 

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