North Korea said Wednesday that its top official on inter-Korean relations had died in a dawn traffic accident, in one of the highest-ranking deaths in Pyongyang since the execution of Kim Jong Un’s uncle two years ago.
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On announcing his death, KCNA state TV described him as leader Kim Jong-un’s “dearest and most trustworthy comrade-in-arms”. The United Front Department is the unit that handles the North’s ties with South Korea.
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Impoverished North Korea’s road network is badly maintained and auto ownership is rare, yet several high-level officials have died in traffic accidents over the years.
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South Korea expressed condolences in a message from its Unification Minister sent through the Panmunjom truce village on the militarised border, an official said.
A career party diplomat, Kim has been known as a key confidante to the leader in the Stalinist state, advising him on inter-Korean relations and more recently on global relations in general. State media have occasionally reported about deadly traffic accidents involving other top officials without elaborating.
Ri Je-Gang, a top party official, reportedly died in a vehicle crash in 2010 at a time when he was rumoured to be involved in a power struggle with Jang Song-Thaek, the brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il. Seoul’s unification ministry offered its condolences on Wednesday. But Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director at the Cmte. for Human Rights in North Korea says that it might not have been a vehicle accident after all. The late Kim Jong-il passed away in late 2011.
KCNA said Kim was Kim Jong-Un’s “closest comrade, a solid revolutionary partner” and that the secretive state’s leader would head an 80-member state funeral on Thursday.
He played a leading role in realising the 2007 summit between the then leader Kim Jong-Il and South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun.
“With Kim’s death, the North will have to reshuffle its branch responsible for inter-Korean policies to fill in his post”.
The death of Kim Yang Gon, head of the United Front Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, deprived Kim Jong Un of one of his most seasoned advisers in his country’s relations with the outside world.
But an official at the South Korean government said that it sees the chance of Kim Yang-gon having been assassinated to be slim.
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“I worry that we can not avoid long suspension of a dialogue between South and North Korea” following Kim’s death, said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.
