The SK Game Ratings Board was originally planning on having a hearing this Dec 21st, but it's been pushed back due to the lack of data and documents provided by Blizzard.

The GRB review process started on December 1st (or possibly the day before), and according the article, after 16 days of reviews and investigations, they had asked Blizzard for additional information.

So, Blizzard Korea was probably contacted this past Friday (Dec 16) for the information and media organizations found out about it today (Monday).

Kim Jong Il died shortly after hearing the news about the Diablo 3 delay. He had been experiencing significant stress over the past several weeks, due to the multiple release delays, causing great mental and physical strain and finally accumulating into a fatal heart attack after hearing the devastating news of another delay. Kim Jong Il was planning on creating a Barbarian, because he felt that the class was the most overpowered and godlike.

And also, coincidentally, Dec 16 is the same day that Bashiok finally addressed the delay concerns by being very ambiguous, not denying anything, and just confirming that there is a delay and to be patient.

It's unfortunate that Blizzard was not fully prepared for this review considering the seriousness of the issue. They explained that they weren't expecting this to happen because they've never had problems like this before from their other (non-RMAH) games. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if certain details were left out.. like the metagame gambling nature of RMAH item selling. :)

Based on what I could translate, it appears that the "additional material requested period" is 7 days from now, at which point they'll undergo their investigation process again. So, it's still a couple weeks away.

So, on the bright side.. it looks like they were making some pretty good progress, and the decision was closer than we think (this year.) Unfortunately, because Blizzard did not provide enough information, it's been delayed, pushing it all back to probably the original early-mid January expectation.

So much for a Dec 31st announcement.. I guess it'll just be a major beta invite, pictures, and game information.