The Ideographic Rapporteur Group (IRG) advises the Unicode Consortium and the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 on Han character additions to the repertoire of the Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646-1 (Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set) character set standards, and on Han unification. The working members of the IRG are either appointed by member governments, or are invited experts from other countries. IRG members include Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taipei Computer Association, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam and USA.
The IRG has contributed several blocks of characters to Unicode/UCS, including the CJK Unified Ideographs, CJK Compatibility Ideographs (and Supplement), and CJK Unified Ideographs Extensions A, B, C, and D. CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E is in preparation, as of Unicode 6.0.
The IRG agreed on the proposal for a CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F at the 38th IRG meeting in June 2012. CJK-F will likely include characters that were removed from CJK-E, Zhuang script and others. The deadline for submission of CJK-F characters is October 20th, 2012.
Note that the accusation that Unicode may destroy Asian countries’ culture is countered by the fact that decisions on Han Unification are made primarily by Asian experts. Similarly, the fact that the Unicode Consortium and ISO/IEC 10646-1 decided to unify Han characters before the creation of the IRG, is countered by the fact that this decision was made by Asian members of both organizations.
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