1906 — An express train from the southeastern port city of Busan travels 450 kilometers to Seoul in 11 hours, a record speed for that era. In 2004, the nation’s new high-speed Korea Train Express, or KTX, covered that distance in about two hours and 40 minutes.

1930 — The Dong-A Ilbo, one of the first dailies in Korea, is suspended from publishing by the Japanese colonial regime. The newspaper was penalized for publishing an article from the U.S. journal “The Nation” that highlighted the importance of the newspaper in the lives of Korean people under Japan’s colonial rule.

1958 — The South Korean government receives 106 cultural properties from Japan that were looted during the 1910-1945 colonial era.

1965 — University students in Seoul stage class boycotts to denounce the South Korean and Japanese governments’ signing of a treaty on fishing, cultural, property and economic cooperation. The treaty, which was finally signed in June that year after 14 years of controversy, was criticized for yielding too much to Japan.

1980 — The nation’s first hydroelectric power plants are completed in Cheongpyeong, Gyeonggi Province.

2001 — Lee Bong-ju wins the Boston Marathon.

2003 — A special counsel begins an inquiry into charges that some aides of President Kim Dae-jung sent money secretly to North Korea before the historic summit meeting between Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang on June 15, 2000. Five officials and an executive of Hyundai Group, which provided part of the money, were convicted by the Supreme Court on March 29, 2004, of violating the Foreign Exchange Control Law by remitting the money illegally.

2004 — General elections are held, with the results showing a rising demand for a generational change in politics. The ruling Uri Party emerged as the majority with 152 seats in the 299-member National Assembly, and young and new candidates prevailed. The number of new lawmakers aged 40 or younger was 129, or 43.1 percent of the total, sharply up from the 28.5 percent in the previous election.

2014 — The 6,835-ton ferry Sewol sinks in waters off the southwestern island of Jindo, leaving 304 people dead in one of the worst maritime disasters in South Korea.

Source: Yonhap News Agency