Today in Korean history

July 30

1953 -- The U.S. Senate passes a bill to spend US$200 million to rehabilitate war-ravaged South Korea. The Korean War, which began in June 1950, when North Korea invaded the South, ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, three days earlier.

1953 -- Yok Do-san, a North Korea-born wrestler who later became a Japanese idol for his power and skill, establishes the Japan Wrestling Association. Yok, better known in Japan as Rikidozan, knocked down opponents with his trademark karate chop in the ring. He emerged as a national hero in the 1950s and early 1960s, helping to restore Japan's pride and self-esteem after its defeat in World War II.

1971 -- The government designates a greenbelt, an area of land protected from development, outside Seoul for the first time.

2000 -- South and North Korea hold their first ministerial meeting in Seoul. They agreed to have inter-Korean ministerial meetings on a regular basis, reopen liaison offices in the border village of Panmunjom and establish a reconciliation week in honor of Aug. 15, the anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

2002 -- South Korean golfer Gloria Park wins the LPGA's Big Apple Classic in New York, with compatriot Han Hee-won finishing in second place.

2006 -- Dozens of crewmen aboard a South Korean tuna trawler are released after nearly four months of captivity in Somalia. The 360-ton ship, owned by Dongwon Fisheries Co. and manned by eight Koreans and 17 others from Indonesia, China and Vietnam, was pirated in April by a group of Somali bandits in waters off the East African country.

2007 -- The Taliban extends the deadline on the execution of 22 South Koreans taken hostage in Afghanistan as the Kabul government refused to accede to a key demand of the kidnappers.

2009 -- North Korea seizes a stray South Korean fishing boat with four crew members and hauls it to a port on its east coast.

2013 -- Four South Korean climbers who went missing in inclement weather during a group mountaineering trip in Japan are found dead. Local police found the bodies of the four near mountain trails connecting Mount Hinokio and Mount Hoken in the Nagano prefecture.

2017 -- President Moon Jae-in appoints Kim Hyun-chong, who led the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement negotiations under the former Roh Moo-hyun government, as trade minister.
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