Today in Korean history

June 13

1955 -- North Korea and Japan sign a fisheries agreement.

1961 -- South Korean students protest alleged election rigging, and 11 universities are temporarily closed as a result.

2000 -- South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il hold the first inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang.

2002 -- Two South Korean middle school students are killed by a U.S. military vehicle in Yangju, just north of Seoul.

2003 -- Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, receives a three-year prison sentence for insider trading and accounting fraud.

2004 -- Thousands of anti-globalization activists rally in downtown Seoul to protest an Asian conference of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an organization they consider a key symbol of corporate globalization. The WEF's two-day Asian strategic roundtable began at the Hotel Shilla in central Seoul earlier in the day to address key economic issues facing the region. More than 180 business, political and public leaders from 21 Asian countries attended the session.

2009 -- North Korea vows to go ahead with uranium enrichment -- a second track to developing a nuclear bomb -- and weaponize all new plutonium it produces, denouncing a U.N. Security Council resolution that ratcheted up sanctions on it.

2015 -- The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that South Korea may have to brace for a drawn-out battle against Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), saying the outbreak is "large and complex." The warning comes as the number of confirmed MERS cases in the country reached 138 earlier in the day.

2017 -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says North Korea has freed an American university student, Otto Warmbier, after holding him for 17 months, a move that could signal a conciliatory tone toward Washington amid intensifying U.S. pressure on the regime over its nuclear and missile programs. Warmbier, however, died shortly after being released, causing tensions between the countries to spike.
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