Historical Timeline: Key Events in South Korea from 1951 to 2017

Sept. 6

1951 -- South Korea establishes the Women's Army Corps amid the 1950-53 Korean War.

1956 -- Lee Joong-sup (1916-56), widely recognized as one of Korea's most talented modern painters, dies of hepatitis. Born in Pyongyang during Japanese colonial rule, he attended art school in Tokyo. He returned to Wonsan, now part of North Korea, and married Masako Yamamoto in 1945. After his wife and two sons returned to Japan in 1952 during the Korean War, he painted some of his most renowned works, with the theme of family predominant.

1976 - A Soviet pilot flies an MiG-25 fighter jet to Japan, saying he wants to defect to the United States. Washington grants his request for asylum.

1994 -- A medical unit of the South Korean Army is dispatched to the western Sahara as part of a United Nations peacekeeping operation.

2007 -- Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo receives a suspended three-year jail term from an appeals court for embezzlement of company funds, allowing him to actively pursue business activities. The Seoul High Court previously convicted Chung, head of the world's sixth-largest automaker, handing down a five-year suspended jail term.

2011 -- South Korea asks foreign countries not to invest or engage in tourism activities at North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort, stressing such actions violate existing property rights.

2012 -- Global ratings agency Fitch Ratings upgrades South Korea's sovereign credit rating by one notch, citing the nation's economic and financial stability despite a volatile global economy.

2017 -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in holds bilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for efforts to stop North Korea from making any further provocations.