Timeline of Key Events in South Korea and Inter-Korean Relations (1980-2020)

Sept. 7

1980 -- An archaeological excavation team from Seoul's Yonsei University finds the bones of a human believed to have lived 10,000 to 60,000 years ago in Danyang, 139 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

1993 -- The personal assets of 1,167 high-level government officials are made public. The disclosure was made under a law obliging public officials to report changes in their assets and was aimed at preventing illicit financing from businesses and land speculation by the officials.

1995 -- Russia scraps its mutual assistance treaty with North Korea.

2000 -- President Kim Dae-jung meets his U.S. counterpart, Bill Clinton, in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. Millennium Summit. Clinton expressed his complete support for Kim's "sunshine" policy toward North Korea, and they issued a joint statement calling for constructive engagement with Pyongyang.

2002 -- A friendly football match between South and North Korea ends in a scoreless draw. It was the first game between the two since a pair of friendlies in 1990. The inter-Korean match was held two months after South Korea co-hosted the World Cup with Japan.

2007 -- Park Yong-sung, chairman of the South Korean conglomerate Doosan Group, steps down as head of the International Judo Federation (IJF), automatically losing his seat on the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Park's resignation leaves Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee as the only South Korean to retain an IOC seat.

2009 -- North Korea discharges 40 million tons of water from Hwanggang Dam into the Imjin River, which flows through South Korea's western region, leaving six South Koreans dead or missing. North Korea blamed the incident on a sudden surge of water and said it will issue alerts in the future.

2010 -- North Korea releases a South Korean fishing boat and its seven crew members after a month of captivity. The boat was seized after allegedly violating the North's eastern exclusive economic zone.

2017 -- South Korea completes the deployment of a THAAD missile defense system in a "tentative" step to counter urgent threats from North Korea after the U.S. Forces Korea transported four additional THAAD rocket launchers into its new base in Seongju, 217 kilometers south of Seoul.

2020 -- Typhoon Haishen leaves the Korean Peninsula after ripping through the southern and eastern regions hit by an earlier tropical storm. Typhoon Haishen pummeled South Korea with powerful winds and heavy rainfall only days after Typhoon Maysak triggered flash floods and caused severe damage to buildings and bridges.