Kim Yong Chol reportedly named as N.K.'s United Front Department chief

Kim Yong Chol reportedly named as N.K.'s United Front Department chief. January. 19, 2016 07:31. zeitung@donga.com.

Kim Yong Chol, a hardliner and chief of North Korea’s general reconnaissance bureau who has masterminded attacks on the South, has reportedly succeeded the late Kim Yang Gon, a dovish politician, to assume Director of United Front Department. “We acquired such intelligence last week,” a source in the South Korean government said on Monday. ‘’It has yet to be confirmed who took over the late Kim’s dual role as secretary in charge of inter-Korean relations at the ruling Workers’ Party.”

At a meeting of its Supreme Council that was presided over by Saenuri Party Chairman Kim Moo-sung, the party`s think tank Yeouido Institute also reported that Kim Yong Chol has been appointed as successor of the late Kim Yang Gon. The latter died suddenly in an unexpected car accident late last year.

Kim Yong Chol is an expert in talks with South Korea, who attended inter-Korean negotiations since the 1980s. While Kim Yang Gon was rational and gentle externally, Kim Yong Chol is a typical fighter who would give difficulties to South Korean delegations by alternatively resorting to eloquent rhetoric and threats. He is known to have been behind the sinking of the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan and artillery attacks on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in 2010, the hacking of Sony USA in 2014, and mine attacks on South Korean soldiers in the inter-Korean demilitarized zone in 2015. He also masterminded the North’s December 1 measure, which blocked South Koreans’ passages to and from the inter-Korean industrial complex in Kaesong in 2008, and threatened to nullify the Armistice Agreement and to transform the South into a "hell of fires" after Pyongyang’s third nuclear test. He was the chief negotiator of Pyongyang’s delegation for inter-Korean military talks that collapsed in October 2014.

“The North may have discovered an eligible person for the position of director of the United Front Department, but it is not so positive for inter-Korean relations,” a South Korean government source said. This is because Kim will serve as a pillar for the North at the inter-Korean 2 + 2 high-level contacts, which the South Korean government seeks to maintain. Watchers say that it has now become more difficult for the South to find a breakthrough in inter-Korean ties that stalled after the North’s fourth nuclear test.