North Korean Top Aid Dies In Car Crash

Kim Yang-gon was involved in North Korean politics for about thirty years, initially as an advisor to former leader Kim Jong-il and more recently as a senior aide growing ever closer to current leader Kim Jong-un.

The announcement of Kim Yang Gon’s death immediately led to speculation that the official had been purged, though the report lavished praise on him, calling him a “steadfast revolutionary comrade” and “the closest comrade-in-arms” of Kim Jong Un, noting that Kim Jong Un would chair the funeral committee.

Kim died on Tuesday in an automobile accident at the age of 73, the agency said.

Kim and Hwang Pyong So, the reclusive regime’s leader’s deputy and political director of North Korea’s army, attended high-level talks inside the Demilitarized Zone.

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

South Korea expressed condolences in a message sent out Wednesday by the country’s Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo.

In 2003, a predecessor to Kim Yang Gon died in a traffic accident and in 2010 top official Ri Je Gang also died in a crash.

Jang himself survived a auto accident in 2006 but was executed in 2013 by his nephew and new leader Kim Jong-Un after being condemned as a “traitor” to the nation. But Kim Jong Il’s military, which traditionally favors a hard-line stance on South Korea, had reportedly tried to hold him in check.

South Korean analysts believe that seasoned policy aides like Kim Yang Gon served as a calming voice for the young Kim Jong Un, advising him on when to employ gestures of reconciliation and when to use brinkmanship and saber rattling to shore up his leadership image in the highly militarised country. The United Front Department is the unit that handles the North’s ties with South Korea. “If you look at the North Korean history, we can see that a surprising large number of their high level North Korean officials have died in auto crashes”.

“He was North Korea’s point man on South Korea”, says Aidan Foster-Carter, honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University. He played a key role in pulling the two Koreas back from the brink of conflict after North Korea’s landmine explosion near the inter-Korean border in August.