The National Institute of Korean Language (NIKL; ) is a

language regulator This is a list of bodies that consider themselves to be authorities on standard languages, often called language academies. Language academies are motivated by, or closely associated with, linguistic purism and Prestige (sociolinguistics), presti ...

of the

Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...

based in Seoul, South Korea. It was created on January 23, 1991, by Presidential Decree No. 13163 (November 14, 1990). It has previously gone by a number of names, including the Academy of the Korean Language () when it was first founded as a non-government organization in 1984, and the National Academy of the Korean Language () when it became a government agency in 1991. It received its current Korean name in 2004 and its current English name in 2015. Within the NIKL is the Center for Teaching and Learning Korean.

Services

Standard Korean Language Dictionary

On January 1, 1992, it began work on compiling the Standard Korean Language Dictionary (SKLD). It published the dictionary on October 11, 1999 in three volumes. It published a revised and online version on October 8, 2008.

Korean-Foreign Language Learners' Dictionary

The NIKL maintains a number of online foreign language dictionaries for a variety of languages, including English, Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Indonesian.

Urimalsaem

Urimalsaem () is an online, open source, and collaborative dictionary that users can edit in a manner similar to how Wikipedia operates, albeit with individual edits reviewed by experts. It was launched on October 5, 2016, with an initial set of 1,109,722

headword In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (: lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' are forms of the s ...

Datasets

The NIKL maintains several datasets for use in research, one of which consists of 3,515,010 news articles in Korean from 2009 to 2018. The dataset has been used in a number of papers on

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

, and have even had derivative datasets created based on them. In 2015, shortly before the 2016

Korean Sign Language Act Korean Sign Language or KSL ( or short name ) is a sign language used for deaf communities of South Korea. It is one of two official languages in the country, alongside Korean. Beginnings The beginnings of KSL date from 1889,Fischer, Susan ''et ...

, the NIKL began collecting a dataset for

Korean Sign Language Korean Sign Language or KSL ( or short name ) is a sign language used for deaf communities of South Korea. It is one of two official languages in the country, alongside Korean. Beginnings The beginnings of KSL date from 1889,Fischer, Susan ''e ...

called the KSL Corpus Project. In 2022, it announced that it had collected 180 hours of language material from 148 deaf people at five locations, and was continuing to collect more.

History

The NIKL was originally founded at a non-governmental level as the Academy of the Korean Language () on May 1, 1984. It was established as a subsidiary of the Korean

Ministry of Culture Ministry of Culture may refer to: * Ministry of Tourism, Cultural Affairs, Youth and Sports (Albania) * Ministry of Culture (Algeria) * Ministry of Culture (Argentina) * Minister for the Arts (Australia) * Ministry of Culture (Azerbaijan)Ministry o ...

on January 23, 1991 under the name National Academy of the Korean Language (). It took its original name again on November 11, 2005, and again changed its name to its current form in October 2015. On January 18, 2022, the NIKL announced several new initiatives: * It would create a Korean language proficiency diagnosis system that leveraged assistance from artificial intelligence. The NIKL's director stated that "If we can implement an evaluation system worked on by 80 percent humans, and 20 percent with the help of AI, it can further increase efficiency. This makes it possible to conduct writing tests on a larger scale". The test is to be developed over five years, from 2023 to 2027, with a budget of

₩ The won sign , is a currency symbol. It represents the South Korean won, the North Korean won and, unofficially, the old Korean Empire won, Korean won. Appearance Its appearance is "W" (the first letter of "Won") with a horizontal strike ...

10 billion won ($8.39 million). The test aims to improve domestic writing skills and to be used on college entrance exams. * It would make significant revisions to their dictionary, after it found that the 1999 Standard Korean Language Dictionary failed to keep up to major changes during the digital era. This project is expected to last between 2022 and 2026. * To meet increasing demand and quality expectations for Korean language teachers outside of the peninsula, it would create a course and certification program for teachers.

References

External links

Official website

English website
{{Authority control

National Institute of Korean Language The National Institute of Korean Language (NIKL; ) is a language regulator of the Korean language based in Seoul, South Korea. It was created on January 23, 1991, by Presidential Decree No. 13163 (November 14, 1990). It has previously gone by a ...

Government agencies of South Korea 1991 establishments in South Korea Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (South Korea)