The Chosun Ilbo, the oldest newspaper still in circulation in Korea, marks its 100th anniversary on Thursday. The Chosun Ilbo has recorded Korea's history every day for the past 100 years, covering both the major upheavals that changed the fate of this country as well as the lives of ordinary people.
The Chosun Ilbo first hit newsstands in 1920 under the Japanese occupation, aiming to voice the opinions of the Korean public and protect their right to information. Honoring the spirit of the March 1 Independence Movement, the Chosun Ilbo was launched on March 5, 1920 and has since striven to report the truth through countless trials and tribulations.
Circumstances permitting it hopes to keep delivering unbiased factual news for the next 100 years.
Now the past 100 years of history come alive in digital format to mark the anniversary. The archival website (newslibrary.chosun.com) opens on Thursday with facsimiles of archival records and articles.
The daily invested W10 billion over the last three years to restore in digital format some 261,589 pages with around 2.9 million articles from 1920 to 1999 (US$1=W1,185). Part of the restoration involved changing the old style of Hangeul to modern format with the assistance of the Yonsei Institute of Language and Information Studies.
Efforts to launch the website began in July 2016. It took more than two years to digitize the pages of old editions. Archival pages and others contained on microfilm were scanned one by one, while staff scoured the entire country to look for missing pages. Their efforts did not end there but continued through the revision of a hundred million words written in old-style Hangeul to the modern format.
President Moon Jae-in sent a congratulatory video clip to the daily on Wednesday. In the clip, he said the 100th anniversary of the Chosun Ilbo is "history itself" and expressed his best hopes of the daily, "which has served as one of the most influential Korean newspapers for over a century, to open another chapter of history."
