Today in Korean history

July 3

1961 -- Army Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee takes office as chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, which ruled South Korea until 1963 and comprised military officials involved in or supportive of Park's May 16 coup.

1971 -- South Korea opens diplomatic ties with Mauritius.

1973 -- Repair work on the country's ancient Buddhist monastery Bulguk Temple in Gyeongju, 370 kilometers southeast of Seoul, is completed. Also, Pohang Iron and Steel Co., South Korea's first integrated steel mill, completes its first-stage construction after more than three years of work.

1974 -- South Korean boxer Hong Soo-hwan captures the World Boxing Association's bantamweight title.

1992 -- South Korea signs a trade pact with Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic.

1995 -- South Korea resumes rice aid to North Korea after the communist country apologized for forcing a South Korean freighter to hoist the North Korean flag as it sailed into the North's northeastern port of Cheongjin with free rice aid.

1998 -- South Korea hands over to North Korea the bodies of nine crewmen of a North Korean submarine that sank off South Korea's eastern city of Gangneung, apparently due to mechanical failure.

2007 -- The National Assembly passes a landmark financial bill that removes sector-by-sector barriers in the capital market, paving the way for the birth of huge U.S.-style investment banks that simultaneously manage banking, securities and insurance businesses.

2018 -- A South Korean delegation of athletes and officials, led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, arrives in Pyongyang to participate in inter-Korean friendly basketball matches. They traveled there aboard Air Force transport planes, marking the first time since the 1953 Armistice Agreement that South Korean military planes have landed on North Korean soil.

2020 -- The National Assembly approves an extra budget bill of 35.1 trillion won in the country's third supplementary budget to finance efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest extra budget marks the biggest amount the country has set aside as supplementary spending so far.
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