Today in Korean history

Dec. 19

1932 -- Korean independence activist Yun Bong-gil is executed in Japan for assassinating seven top Japanese military leaders. Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

1962 -- South Korea and Switzerland establish diplomatic ties.

1992 -- Opposition leader Kim Dae-jung declares his retirement from politics after his defeat in the presidential election. He later became president in 1997 in the midst of the Asian financial crisis.

2002 -- Ruling New Millennium Democratic Party candidate Roh Moo-hyun is elected president.

2011 -- North Korea's state-run media announce in an urgent dispatch that Kim Jong-il, the 69-year-old leader of the secluded regime, has died from "physical strain and fatigue" during a train ride on Dec. 17.

2012 -- Park Geun-hye, the eldest daughter of late President Park Chung-hee, is elected South Korea's first female president. The candidate of the conservative ruling Saenuri Party defeats Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party in the tight race.

2014 -- South Korea's Constitutional Court orders the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), a pro-North Korean minor opposition party, outlawing a political party for the first time since the country adopted its first constitution in 1948.

The 8-1 ruling effectively spells the immediate demise of the party created in 2011. The court concludes that its principles and activities were in violation of the "basic democratic order" of the country, which remains technically at war with North Korea.
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