IRG is responsible for reviewing proposals to add new
CJK unified ideographs to the
Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (ISO/IEC 10646), and equivalently the
Unicode Standard, and submitting consolidated proposals for sets of unified ideographs to WG2, which are then processed for encoding in the respective standards by SC2 and the Unicode Technical Committee. National and liaison bodies that have been represented in IRG include China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan (no longer active), North Korea (no longer active), South Korea, Singapore (no longer active), the
Taipei Computer Association (TCA), the United Kingdom, Vietnam, and the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC). As of Unicode version 17.0, the IRG has been responsible for submitting the following blocks of
CJK unified and compatibility ideographs for encoding: •
CJK Unified Ideographs and
CJK Compatibility Ideographs (version 1.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A (version 3.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B and
CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement (version 3.1) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C (version 5.2) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D (version 6.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E (version 8.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F (version 10.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G (version 13.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H (version 15.0) •
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J (version 17.0) Since 2015, proposed characters submitted by IRG member bodies have been processed in batches called "IRG Working Sets". Each working set undergoes several years of review by IRG experts before official submission of the working set to WG2 as a new block. Once accepted by WG2, the proposed block is processed according to the individual procedures followed by
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 and the
Unicode Technical Committee (UTC). In the case of SC2, this involves balloting of ISO member bodies. The following working sets have been processed by IRG:
WS2015. 5,547 submitted characters which resulted in 4,939 characters encoded in
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G (Unicode version 13.0, March 2020): • China: 2,277 submitted characters (1,268
Zhuang characters, 1,009 characters from the
Hanyu Da Zidian (汉语大字典) dictionary) • Republic of Korea: 469 submitted characters • SAT: 350 submitted characters • TCA: 500 submitted characters • United Kingdom: 1,640 submitted characters • UTC: 311 submitted characters
WS2017. 5,027 submitted characters which resulted in 4,192 characters encoded in
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H (Unicode version 15.0, September 2022): • China: 963 submitted characters (143 person name characters, 354 place name characters, 29 characters from the
Hanyu Da Cidian (汉语大词典) dictionary, 33 characters from the
Dictionary of Chinese Medicine (中医字典), and 404
Zhuang characters) • Republic of Korea: 686 submitted characters • SAT: 305 submitted characters • TCA: 895 submitted characters • United Kingdom: 1,001 submitted characters • UTC: 193 submitted characters • Vietnam: 984 submitted characters
WS2021. 4,951 submitted characters which resulted in 4,298 characters encoded in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J (Unicode version 17.0, September 2025): • China: 1,223 submitted characters (151 place name characters, 768 science and technology characters, 4 person name characters, and 300
Zhuang characters) • Republic of Korea: 191 submitted characters • SAT: 383 submitted characters • TCA: 1,000 submitted characters • United Kingdom: 1,000 submitted characters • UTC: 153 submitted characters • Vietnam: 1,001 submitted characters
WS2024. A total of 4,674 characters were submitted for Working Set 2024 in July 2024 by China, Republic of Korea, SAT, TCA, United Kingdom, UTC, and Vietnam: • China: 1,000 submitted characters, of which 700 are Chinese characters, and 300 are
Zhuang characters • Republic of Korea: 178 submitted characters • SAT: 252 submitted characters • TCA: 1,000 submitted characters • United Kingdom: 1,000 submitted characters • UTC: 244 submitted characters • Vietnam: 1,000 submitted characters ==References==