Top North Korean Aide In Charge Of Negotiating With South Korea Dies

A senior North Korean official who was described as the country’s “top negotiator” with South Korea and a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un reportedly died this week in a car crash.

State news agency KCNA said Wednesday that 73-year-old Kim Yang Gon -- Kim Jong Un’s “dearest and most trustworthy comrade-in-arms” -- had died the previous morning in a traffic accident.

The news outlet offered no further details about the cause of death, but said the North Korean leader would lead an 80-member state funeral for Kim on Thursday. 

Kim was secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party and chief of its United Front Department, which manages North Korea’s relations with South Korea. As Bloomberg noted, Kim was a veteran policymaker who played a central role as a negotiator between the two countries.

Last August, Kim was involved in crafting an agreement that served to defuse serious military tensions between the two nations following an exchange of artillery fire and a border blast that maimed two South Korean soldiers.

He also played a “leading role” in the orchestration of the 2007 summit between the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and then-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, The Guardian reported. 

With Kim’s death, concerns have been raised that relations between the two Koreas may deteriorate.

“The South has lost a reliable interlocutor and contact in Pyongyang,” Michael Madden, editor of the North Korea Leadership Watch blog, told Bloomberg. “Kim Jong Un has lost a capable and trusted elder adviser whom he could rely on.”

Experts said that finding someone to take Kim's place will be a challenge.

“In light of the North’s nature, I don’t see anyone who can replace [Kim] in his role in daring to offer policy ideas and advice to the leader in these fields,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, told The Guardian. 

“This is going to deliver negative impacts on inter-Korean relations,” Yang added.

There has been speculation that Kim's death may be the result of “political foul play,” Agence France-Presse reported. 

“Some of the North's most promising party leaders have died in traffic accidents,” AFP noted. Kim's predecessor, Kim Yong Sun, reportedly died in a traffic accident in 2003.

However, North Korea experts have said that the high rate of fatal road accidents involving officials could also be due to the country's poor quality roads or the tendency of officials to drive intoxicated after attending exclusive parties. Country officials also “tend to flaunt traffic regulations,” Bloomberg reported. 

Earlier on HuffPost: 

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