Today in Korean history

Jan. 16

1948 -- Giuseppe Verdi's opera "La Traviata" is performed in South Korea for the first time.

1951 -- China rejects a United Nations proposal for a cease-fire in the Korean War.

1990 -- South Korea's Hyundai Group obtains formal permission from the Soviet Chamber of Commerce and Industry to set up a subsidiary in Moscow, becoming the first domestic business group to do so.

1997 -- Novelist Miri Yu, a second-generation Korean resident in Japan, wins the coveted Akutagawa Prize for her book "Family Cinema," which depicts the relationships of scattered family members who reunite to make a film about their lives.

1998 -- A medical team at Seoul National University Hospital succeeds in transplanting a Korean-made artificial heart into a patient, the first such operation in the country.

2004 -- South Korea and the United States agree to relocate all U.S. troops out of Seoul over the next three years.

2014 -- North Korea proposes halting all cross-border slander starting Jan. 30 and calls for mutual action to prevent a nuclear calamity on the Korean Peninsula.
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