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Top North Korean aide dies in car crash
A top North Korean official in charge of ties with South Korea and reunification was killed in a traffic accident, Pyongyang’s state media said Wednesday.
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Choe’s reinstatement was revealed when North Korea announced a state funeral committee for Kim Yang-gon, a senior official who died in a traffic accident on Tuesday.
After the sudden death of Kim Jong-Il in 2011, Kim Yang-Gon was known as a key confidante to his son, the young leader Kim Jong-Un, advising him on inter-Korean and worldwide relations.
Last August, during a period of heightened inter-Korean tensions over a landmine detonation and subsequent exchange of artillery fire at the Demilitarized Zone, Kim Yang Gon personally proposed to the South to hold another round of inter-Korean talks, which he attended along with Hwang Pyong So. “So occasionally such incidents might happen”, Andrei Lankov, a professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University, said. His funeral ceremony will be held on Thursday.
A top North Korean aide died in a vehicle crash, according to state-run media, but little other information was given. Kim Yong Sun was a close aide to then-leader Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un.
Bruce Klingner, a North Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said that Kim Yang Gon may have been punished for the collapse of the inter-Korean talks earlier this year, which concluded without any agreement on further measures to build trust between the two sides.
Jang himself survived a vehicle accident in 2006 before being executed.
June 3, 2010: KCNA says Ri Je Gang, first vice department director of the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, died in a traffic accident at age 80 the previous day.
Yesterday’s KCNA dispatch described him as the North Korean leader’s “closest comrade-in-arms and steadfast revolutionary comrade” who had made “dedicated” efforts to push for unification with South Korea.
In 2007, Kim was named the head of the party’s United Front Department, which manages Pyongyang’s relations with Seoul.
“The South has lost a reliable interlocutor and contact in Pyongyang”, Michael Madden, editor of the North Korea Leadership Watch blog, said by email.
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Relations between the two Koreas are expected to continue to face a rocky road this year as they failed to build on rare momentum in recent months and the North could still stage major provocations.