Historical Timeline: Key Events in South Korea's Modern History

April 29 1932 -- Yun Bong-gil attacks Japanese officials at a park in Shanghai where they gathered to celebrate the birthday of then Japanese Emperor Hirohito. The Korean activist threw two bombs he had hidden in lunch boxes onto the podium, killing seven top Japanese military leaders, in protest of Japan's colonization of Korea. Yun was executed in Japan later that year.

1975 -- The South Korean Embassy in Saigon closes at the end of the Vietnam War.

1978 -- The country's first nuclear power plant, Kori No. 1, begins commercial operation.

1991 -- A unified women's table tennis team from both South and North Korea wins the world championships in Chiba, Japan.

1998 -- Samsung Electronics Co. begins production of a 256MB DRAM chip, becoming the world's first producer of the sophisticated chip, causing a major impact on the global DRAM market.

2010 -- South Korea holds a mass funeral for 46 sailors killed in North Korea's sinking of the warship Cheonan.

2013 -- South Korea's National Assembly adopts a resolution condemning Japan's moves to glorify its militaristic past.

2014 -- President Park Geun-hye apologizes over the deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry, saying the government failed to prevent the disaster and bungled its initial response. The April 16, 2014, sinking claimed 304 lives, most of them high school students on a field trip.

2017 -- The USS Carl Vinson, a U.S. aircraft carrier, starts a joint naval drill with the South Korean Navy in the East Sea amid heightened tensions from North Korea's failed ballistic missile launch earlier in the day.