Aide to Kim Jong-un Dies in Car Accident
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — A senior 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 car accident, the country’s official news media reported Wednesday.

The death of Kim Yang-gon, head of the United Front Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, deprived Mr. Kim of one of his most seasoned advisers in his country’s relations with the outside world. The department is in charge of handling North Korea’s dealings with the South.

Kim Yang-gon, 73, was a familiar face for negotiators from South Korea who have haggled with the North for years over issues such as its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the two Koreas’ efforts to arrange temporary reunions of relatives separated by the Korean War six decades ago.

The North Korean news media did not provide details of Mr. Kim’s death; however, it called him “a loyal revolutionary warrior” and one of the leader Mr. Kim’s “closest comrades.”

As recently as August, the party secretary joined the North Korean delegation at talks with the South that defused a military standoff between the two, which was originally caused by an explosion of land mines that maimed two South Korean soldiers on the border.

South Korean analysts believe that seasoned policy aides like Kim Yang-gon served as a calming voice for 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 militarized country.

Jeong Joon-hee, a South Korean government spokesman, said it was “too early to determine how Mr. Kim’s death will affect inter-Korean relations.” He said that the unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, the South’s lead official on North Korean affairs, had sent condolences to Pyongyang.

The deaths of senior figures in North Korea’s secretive government have often been followed by speculation that the official might have fallen out of favor with the top leadership, and that an assassination might have been disguised as an accident. But the laudatory treatment of Kim Yang-gon in the North’s state news media on Wednesday, and the announcement that Kim Jong-un would lead his funeral committee, made that appear unlikely in this case, and there was little speculation along those lines in the South’s news reports.

With the news of Kim Yang-gon’s death, North Korean news media delivered another surprise: The list of senior officials joining the funeral committee included Choe Ryong-hae.

Mr. Choe, once considered No. 2 in the North Korean hierarchy, disappeared suddenly from public view this year. Last month, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers in Seoul that it believed that Kim Jong-un had banished Mr. Choe to a collective farm for re-education.

北韓統戰部長金養建 車禍身亡

北韓官媒朝中社報導，勞動黨中央書記兼統一戰線部部長金養建29日清晨車禍身亡，享壽73歲，預定31日上午出殯。

朝中社報導，金養建於29日清晨6點15分在交通事故中死亡，並盛讚他「一直為實現黨的自主統一政策而奮鬥奉獻，憑藉對黨和革命的無限忠誠，對祖國和人民的奉獻精神，以及堅定的革命原則和謙虛品格，深受廣大黨員和人民的愛戴和尊敬」。

北韓官方迅速成立治喪委員會並發布名單，由北韓領導人金正恩擔任委員長，一度失勢的勞動黨書記崔龍海位列另兩名書記金己男和崔泰福之間，顯示崔龍海已重返權力核心。

金養建負責對南韓及外國事務，2007年在時任領導人金正日和南韓總統盧武鉉舉行元首峰會時嶄露頭角，是當時唯一露臉的北韓官員。

今年8月，南北韓就不斷升高的朝鮮半島衝突展開會談，北韓方面由人民軍總政治局長黃炳誓及金養建主談，但談判沒有成果。去年10月南韓舉辦仁川亞運期間，黃炳誓、金養建及崔龍海三人閃電訪問南韓一天，可見金養建在北韓中央之地位。

南韓中央日報曾報導，南韓前總統李明博的回憶錄「總統的時間」今年2月上市後，成為金正恩整肅異己的工具，派員調查書中提及、包括金養建在內的多名北韓官員，金養建保住官位，但多名官員因此遭免職。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/world/asia/aide-to-kim-jong-un-dies-in-car-accident.html

2015-12-30．聯合晚報．A6．國際焦點．編譯莊蕙嘉