Gwangju: Students in the southwestern city of Gwangju take to the streets to protest Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea, which began in 1910. The uprising was the climax of a number of demonstrations and class boycotts by the city’s student organizations, which tried to revive Korean language and history education in schools. The Japanese governor-general in Korea barred the instruction of Korean language and history, and replaced those classes with Japanese ones as part of a policy to deprive Koreans of their identity. The colonial rule ended in 1945 with Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II.

According to Yonhap News Agency, in 1979, a state funeral was held for then President Park Chung-hee, after he was assassinated by his intelligence chief Kim Jae-kyu following an 18-year rule. Following his rise to power through a military coup, Park secured the presidency for life by changing the Constitution. The assassination occurred a year after his ninth term began.

In 1980, a court martial by the South
Korean Army sentenced then opposition leader Kim Dae-jung to death on charges of sedition. The administration of then President Chun Doo-hwan, a general who rose to power through a coup after the death of Park Chung-hee, charged him with attempting to overthrow the government. Kim’s death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released a year later to receive medical treatment in the United States for an injury to his leg from torture. Kim later served as president from 1998 to early 2003 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts for democracy and inter-Korean reconciliation.

In 2007, North Korea stated it would allow a South Korean conglomerate to start a sightseeing tour of a scenic mountain on its border with China the following year, as agreed on at a recent inter-Korean summit of leaders. In 2009, North Korea announced that it had completed reprocessing spent fuel rods and made “noticeable successes” in weaponizing plutonium extracted from them. The announcement
came a day after North Korea warned it would “go its own way” if the U.S. remains unresponsive.

In 2010, the divided Koreas resumed the reunions of families separated by war six decades ago amid heightened tensions along their border after a series of incidents involving gunfire. It was the second such event in a week. In 2015, the Park Geun-hye government announced a plan to reintroduce state-authored history textbooks for secondary school students. Adopting state history textbooks was one of Park’s key policies to “rectify” what she called content that was written from a left-wing perspective.

In 2016, Choi Soon-sil, a close confidante of President Park Geun-hye, was formally arrested over a massive corruption scandal. The 60-year-old longtime friend of Park faced a string of charges, including bribery and extortion involving top conglomerates. In 2019, the National Assembly ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, making South Korea the eighth nation to endorse the international pact aimed at cutt
ing greenhouse gases among the world’s top 10 emitters.