Today in Korean history

Feb. 11

1940 -- The Japanese colonial regime orders all Koreans to adopt Japanese names.

1951 -- As the indiscriminate killings continue for a third day, 500 more villagers are shot and killed in Geochang, a county in the southeast of the country, by South Korean soldiers who wrongfully identified them as collaborators with North Korean communists.

1981 -- An election committee to elect South Korea's 12th president is set up with 5,278 members. The committee, representing 40 million South Koreans, elected as head of state Chun Doo-hwan, a former army general, who was later convicted of amassing hundreds of billions of won in slush funds.

2003 -- The Seoul metropolitan government announces plans for a project to restore the Cheonggyecheon, a stream hidden by an overpass running through downtown Seoul. The stream had been buried under concrete since 1958, when the country was in the early stages of industrialization.

2007 -- Nine foreigners are killed and 18 others injured in a pre-dawn fire that engulfed an immigration detention center in the southern city of Yeosu, about 450 km south of Seoul. The deceased, mostly Chinese, were being held in the facility after they were caught trying to enter South Korea or were in the country illegally.

2012 -- Three South Korean tourists are kidnapped by an armed group of Bedouin tribesmen on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The Christian tourists were traveling by bus near the Saint Catherine monastery in the southern part of the peninsula. They were released the next day after hours of negotiation.

2016 -- North Korea orders all South Koreans to leave the Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North's border city in retaliation for Seoul's suspension of the complex. Seoul earlier decided to shut down the factory zone in response to the North's latest nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.
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