Kim Yong-nam, the last ceremonial leader of North Korea, has died at the age of 97, the country’s state media reported on Tuesday.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim died on November 3 from multiple organ failure following an illness. He was not related to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
From 1998 to 2019, he was the head of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s parliament, the highest ceremonial position in the country. Previously, he served as the country’s foreign minister from 1983 and 1998. According to APTN, people who met him described him as mild-mannered but firm in his views.
After his retirement in 2019 and subsequent constitutional amendments, the functions once associated with the head of state were absorbed by the State Affairs Commission, chaired by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Kim Yong-nam had close ties to the Soviet Union and Russia. Educated in the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1959, he studied history at Tomsk and Rostov State Universities. Kim visited the USSR and then Russia on numerous occasions.
Most recently, he attended the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War in Moscow in 2015 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018, meeting President Vladimir Putin on both occasions. He also took part in the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Throughout his career, Kim Yong-nam played a measured but important role in relations with Seoul. South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young has expressed condolences on Kim’s passing, saying that the latter helped open talks by leading Pyongyang’s delegation to the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics and recalled “meaningful discussions on peace and South-North relations” during their meetings in 2005 and 2018.
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