The Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS), an international organization aimed at promoting peaceful relations among China, Japan and South Korea, revealed a new dictionary featuring the most frequently used Chinese characters in the three countries, the Trilateral Common Vocabulary Dictionary (TCVD), at a Beijing ceremony on Saturday.

Selected by experts from the three countries based on a list of 808 commonly used Chinese characters that was released at the 2014 Northeast Asia Trilateral Forum, the 658 entries in the dictionary consist of those terms that are most frequently used in public media such as newspapers, public signs as well as TV shows in the three countries.

Two years in the making, the dictionary published in Chinese, Japanese and Korean is expected to be a practical guide to those who are interested in learning about the languages and cultures of the three countries, Han Mei, TCS deputy secretary general, said at the Saturday event.

"Chinese characters are a precious cultural legacy shared by China, Japan and South Korea. Exchanges concerning Chinese characters can help strengthen our ties," Han explained at the event.

First introduced into the Korean Peninsula between the third and fourth centuries and later making their way to Japan, Chinese characters had a long lasting influence on the languages and cultures of East Asian countries.

Today, Japan still makes use of a number of Chinese characters, called Kanji, in writing, while in South Korea, even though Chinese characters are rarely used in written works, the language still uses numerous loan words that originated from the Chinese language.

The South Korean launch ceremony for the dictionary was held last week in Seoul while the Japanese ceremony is scheduled to be held in Kyoto in the near future.