National Documents Become AI Infrastructure... National Library of Korea Launches 'Gongyoo Seojae' Platform

Opening Access to Text, Image, and Character Datasets... "Gongyoo Seojae" Revamped
Usable for OCR, Natural Language Processing, and Digital Humanities Research
AI Learning Data Includes Modern Magazines, Government Publications, Textbooks, and OA Papers

The National Library of Korea is releasing 38.33 million AI learning datasets, processed from the library’s national document collection, to the public for the first time.

The screen of the AI learning data platform "Gongyu Library," newly revamped and unveiled by the National Library of Korea on the 17th. Users can search, download, and utilize a total of 38.33 million text, image, and character datasets built from national documents such as modern magazines and government publications from the 1930s to 1940s and textbooks. National Library of Korea

The library announced that, starting September 17, it will make available via the “Gongyoo Seojae” platform a total of 3,974 text datasets, 21,485 image datasets—including tables, illustrations, advertisements, and photos—plus metadata and 38.3 million character-level datasets.

The datasets include modern magazines from the 1930s–1940s whose copyright issues have been resolved, government publications and textbooks from the 1940s–1960s, material published by the library, and open access (OA) academic papers licensed for AI training. Users on the Gongyoo Seojae platform can freely view, download, and use these materials.

The text datasets have been refined to be easily recognized by AI, so that they can be used immediately in research and service development. The character-level datasets include various forms of character data, which can be utilized for developing optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing technologies—areas where it is difficult for small and venture companies to secure large-scale learning data, according to the library.

The Gongyoo Seojae platform, originally a project-based platform, has also been completely revamped to focus on AI learning data. The user experience has been improved so anyone can search and download materials without registering as a member, and search functions by material or image type have been enhanced. The platform can be used for a wide range of purposes, including AI and digital humanities research, service and app development, and content creation.

In particular, by processing and making available large volumes of literature, records, and images in formats that AI can analyze, the platform is expected to broaden the scope of digital humanities research. Researchers will be able to pursue new kinds of studies by analyzing patterns in words, writing style, and images within this massive archive.

The National Library of Korea also plans to release, by the end of this year, text data from about 300 Korean hardback novels, totaling approximately 30,000 pages. The library will continue to expand the construction and openness of national document datasets, further developing Gongyoo Seojae as an AI learning and research platform.

Hyunjoo Lee, Director of Digital Information Planning at the National Library of Korea, stated, “This is an important starting point for transforming the library’s vast knowledge resources into core infrastructure for the AI era,” and added, “We will continue to expand the scope of data openness so that everyone in the country can benefit from these public knowledge resources.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.