North Korea’s top official Kim killed in auto crash

One of North Korea’s most powerful politicians could return to Pyongyang after the sudden death of inter-Korea negotiator Kim Yang Gon, who died in a auto crash Tuesday.

Kim Yang Gon, 73, served as director of the United Front Department and secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). The two men participated in high-level talks this summer to quell tensions following land mine blasts in the demilitarized zone that maimed two South Korean soldiers and put both countries on the brink of war.

Kim Yang Gon’s death comes at the end of a year that has seen a number of top-ranking North Korean officials disappear or be executed, though the fact he was lauded in state media and will get a state funeral would suggest it may indeed have been accidental.

Scarlatoiu explains how the late Kim Jong Il used vehicle accidents as cover-ups for North Korean officials’ deaths, who might have been executed or their auto might have been collided with on objective.

As chief of the United Front Department of the Workers’ Party, Kim was responsible for engagement with Seoul and met senior South Korean officials during a surprise visit past year for the closing ceremony of the Asian Games. The spy agency, which has a mixed record on tracking North Korea, said Wednesday it was trying to check details about Choe.

Those discussions in Panmunjom created an agreement that ended the standoff, with both sides agreeing to increase ties to boost, including exchanges between civilians on either side of the heavily armed border dividing the two nations.

A career party diplomat, Mr Yang-gon was known as a key confidante to the leader of the Stalinist state, advising him on inter-Korean relations and more recently on global relations in general. The North Korea’s top official in charge of relations with South Korea has died of a auto accident, the Korean Central News Agency announced Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015.

The South’s government wasted little time in expressing condolences, according to a unification ministry spokesperson who highlighted Kim’s contribution to a landmark bilateral cooperation deal in August.

“This is going to deliver negative impacts on inter-Korean relations”, Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP news agency.