The Ideographic Research Group (IRG) is a working group under ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 (see later part of this page) of the ISO.
It focuses on the development of ideographic characters (Han characters used in China, Japan, Korea and other parts of Asia) in the ISO/IEC 10646 international coding standard.
Its mission is to submit ideographic characters for inclusion in the ISO/IEC 10646.
The IRG has developed the CJK Unified Ideographs Block and the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A - Extension G blocks.
IRG Members
IRG members include Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taipei Computer Association, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and USA.
Representatives from the Unicode Consortium also attend IRG meetings for coordinating the synchronization between the ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode.
Documents
Various documents of the IRG including meeting agenda, meeting reports submitted to the ISO, resolutions agreed at IRG meetings, etc.
are available on the following web site https://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~irg/.
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2
The ISO/IEC 10646 is defined by a workgroup, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2, under the ISO.
The Joint Technical Committee on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1), which was formed by an agreement between the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the ISO,
is responsible for the IT works in both the IEC and ISO. Under the ISO/IEC JTC1,
a subcommittee called ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 is formed with the mission to standardize the coded character sets.
Under this subcommittee, there is a working group called ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 which is responsible for the development of the ISO/IEC 10646.