North Korean politics Top official on South Korean relations dies

A North Korean governing party secretary and key foreign policy aide to the country’s young and relatively inexperienced leader, Kim Jong Un, has died in a auto crah, the country’s official news media reported on Wednesday.

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.

One South Korean report claims 70 officials have died since the start of Kim Jong-un’s reign in 2011.

“He was surely trusted by the Kim family regime”, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. But Kim’s military, which traditionally favors a hard-line stance on South Korea, had reportedly tried to hold him in check.

North Korea and the party will “always remember” the life of Kim who remained “boundlessly loyal to the party and the revolution with steadfast faith in the justice of his cause”, it added.

Free North Korea Radio said Thursday that Kim died in a vehicle crash on his way back to Pyongyang after visiting the northwestern border city of Sinuiju for an inspection of a factory.

Kim Yang Gon was the Secretary of the Worker’s Party in North Korea.

Kim Yang-Gon was the only North Korean official present at their meeting in Pyongyang.

No other details on the vehicle accident have been released, besides that it was related to a traffic accident.

These notably include the executions of his uncle Jang Song-thaek for alleged “anti-revolutionary crimes” in 2013, as well as defence minister Hyon Yong-choi in May of this year.

In 1976, an official said to rival to then-president Kim Il Sung died in a auto crash.

John Nilsson-Wright says these facts not only suggest it was a genuine vehicle accident, but also shows Kim Jong-un’s whole leadership style is evolving.

Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, also expressed concern that the sudden death of Kim Yang Gon could have a negative influence on North-South relations.

“North Korea has a long track record of suspicious deaths around high-level officials”, North Korea expert Andrei Lankov told Reuters.

According to the Swiss non-profit International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons, North Korea is one of only eight countries in the world with nuclear weapons.