Today in Korean history

May 3

1967 -- Park Chung-hee, who led a military coup in 1961, is re-elected as South Korea's sixth president.

1984 -- Pope John Paul II, the 264th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, visits South Korea.

1999 -- Choheung Bank, now merged with Shinhan Bank, announces a merger with Chungbuk Bank, following the financial meltdown that hit the country in late 1997.

2005 -- The board of SK Telecom Co., South Korea's top mobile carrier, approves a plan to sell a major stake of its handset-making unit SK Teletech Co. to then No. 3 player Pantech Co. in a deal worth 300 billion won (US$257 million).

2010 -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il arrives in the Chinese port city of Dalian by train in his first trip to China since 2006. He left the city the following day for a summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing.

2013 -- The last seven South Koreans who had negotiated the settlement of accounts on behalf of local businesses at an inter-Korean complex in North Korea return home, completing a pullout from the zone amid high tensions on the peninsula.

2018 -- Former President Chun Doo-hwan is indicted for defaming in his memoirs a deceased Catholic priest and other victims in his government's brutal crackdown on a 1980 pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Gwangju. The fresh indictment comes 23 years after he was convicted of mutiny and corruption before being released on a special presidential pardon. The former leader from 1980-88 has never admitted guilt to the mutiny charges and also denied all charges related to the memoirs.

2021 -- South Korea's financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission, partially lifted its ban on short selling of some listed stocks following a 14-month ban amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
(END)