Seoul: In a tragic turn of events in 1907, Korean patriot Lee Jun chose to end his life by suicide in The Hague. Lee's drastic action came after he was obstructed from attending an international peace meeting in the Dutch city, where he intended to voice his protest against Japan's colonial domination of the Korean Peninsula.
According to Yonhap News Agency, significant historical events have marked Korea's past, including a 1950 appeal by the United Nations secretary-general. This appeal, prompted by a Security Council resolution, called on U.N. member nations to contribute troops to the U.N. Command, a force established to counter the North Korean invasion during the Korean War.
Fast forward to 1993, North Korea and the United States engaged in high-level discussions in Geneva. These talks, led by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju and Robert Gallucci, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs, focused on the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspections of North Korea's nuclear facilities at the Yongbyon complex.
In 2004, the South Korean National Intelligence Service identified Chinese hackers as the culprits behind a cyberattack on 278 computers across 10 government organizations. The breach involved the use of two information-stealing viruses, the Peep Trojan and Backdoor Revacc.
By 2007, inspectors from the international atomic energy watchdog had arrived in North Korea. Their mission was to initiate the shutdown and sealing of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor along with its support facilities.
In a diplomatic escalation in 2008, South Korea recalled its ambassador to Japan. This strong countermeasure was in response to Tokyo's renewed territorial claims over Dokdo, a cluster of islets controlled by South Korea.
The year 2015 saw South Korea repatriating two of five North Korean fishermen who were rescued after their vessel experienced engine failure and drifted off the east coast. The remaining three fishermen expressed their desire to defect to South Korea.
In 2018, tensions rose when Russian planes violated South Korea's air defense identification zone, KADIZ, four times in a single day. In response, the South Korean defense ministry summoned a Russian military attache, and the foreign ministry called in a senior Russian Embassy official in Seoul to lodge a protest against the violation.