Today in Korean history

April 8

1899 -- Telephone service becomes available in Seoul for the first time.

1970 -- Thirty-three people are crushed to death when an apartment building collapses in Seoul.

1980 -- South Korea launches its first domestically manufactured submarine.

1984 -- Telephone service between South Korea and China is launched.

2002 -- Speed skater Kim Dong-sung wins six gold medals at the 2002 World Short Track Championship.

2007 -- Bill Richardson, Democratic governor of the U.S. state of New Mexico, arrives in Pyongyang to discuss reclaiming the remains of American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War and ending the dispute on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

2008 -- Yi So-yeon, a female astronaut and bio-systems engineer, becomes the first South Korean to reach orbit.

2009 -- Ssangyong Motor Co. cuts 37 percent of its workforce in a survival bid.

2013 -- North Korea says it is withdrawing all of its workers from an inter-Korean industrial complex in response to what it claims are the South's provocations against the country's dignity. All operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which first began production in late 2004, came to a halt on April 9, when the North pulled out its 53,000 workers from the park at the height of political and military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The jointly run industrial zone reopened in September.

2019 -- Korean Air Lines Co. Chairman Cho Yang-ho dies of lung disease. His only son Won-tae succeeded the late chairman to take the helm of the national flag carrier as well as several other affiliates under Hanjin Group.
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