Every civilized country has its own national language dictionary, but in Korea, there is still no such thing as a national language dictionary in the unique proverbial Korean script (now called Hangul script), which makes it somewhat inconvenient to study Korean affairs. Therefore, in 1907, the Interrogation Bureau also planned to compile a Korean dictionary, but when the work was transferred to the Counselor's Office in the following year, the plan was revised as follows.
(1) To complete the word-for-word translation that is currently underway.
(2) To use the glossary as the basis for compiling the Naishen language glossary, to seek the opinions of experts experienced in the compilation of dictionaries, to appoint a chief editor, and to compile the Naishen language glossary according to that policy.
(3) The compilation committee shall be composed of experts from the Governor-General's Office and schools, and shall share the workload.
(4) The method of compilation shall be decided upon after careful deliberation by the chief editor and members of the committee.
The words were arranged in the order of the Korean proverbs, the Chinese characters were grouped together by their initial letters, and three kinds of indexes were attached: proverbs, Japanese syllabaries, and Chinese pictures. The draft was completed in June 1913, but it was decided to reexamine it. In June 1913, the drafting of the dictionary was tentatively completed, but it was decided to reexamine it.
However, although this dictionary had a commentary in Korean in accordance with the order of compilation, there were many who felt that a double commentary was not in keeping with the style of a dictionary and that there was no great need to create a special Korean dictionary for Koreans. In early 1914, the new dictionary was published.
At the beginning of 1914, he started to correct the interpretation of the proverbs, and in September, he started to collect the Biri-mang (Korean words indicated by the phonetic pronunciation of Chinese characters), which were said to have been created during the Silla period, and by the end of the same year, he had collected 650 words. After unifying the style and form of the interpretation, printing the manuscript tentatively, and correcting the words, he started to produce the manuscript in January 1916. As a result, by the end of the same year, a draft with a total of 68,000 words was completed.
However, there was still a need to organize the dictionaries, so at the beginning of 1918, a committee of sixteen Korean dictionary examiners, headed by Secretary Oda Mikijiro, was appointed from among the staff of the headquarters and the offices to which the dictionaries belonged. (1). After many years of research and investigation, the manuscript was finally completed in March of the same year, and the printing process was started. The total number of pages is more than 12,000.
In the midst of this project, in 1915, the work of investigating the old customary system was transferred from the Office of the Counselor to the Central Agency, and the staff was also transferred to the Central Agency, but due to the existing relationship, they continued to work on this project and completed it. The project was led by the Administrative Officer, Mikijiro Oda, and his subordinates, Hongji Nishimura, Masayoshi Kaneko, Ryozo Takiguchi, Interpreter Sheng Yuan, Sueki Ki, Hyeon Hyeon, Han Mutsumi Kim, Ryuichiro Kawakami, Youngdae Ju, Yun Di Uo, and Yi Yang Park.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)