Kim Yong-nam

Chairman, Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea

Date of Birth: 1928
Place of Birth: Pyongyang

Born in Pyongyang in 1928, while the Korean peninsula was under Japanese occupation, Kim Yong-nam came of age as Soviet-backed Kim Il-sung consolidated power over North Korea and set it on its singular, isolated path. He is as near as North Korea gets to a foreign policy guru.

Kim attended Kim Il-sung University, studied at Moscow State University and then returned to Pyongyang to begin his smooth climb to the top of the ruling Workers' Party. He was elected to the party's Central Committee in 1970 and from 1974 was the head of its international department. From 1983 to 1998, he was Foreign Minister. A three-year mourning period after Kim Il-sung's 1994 death allowed his son Kim Jong-il to consolidate power. Elected Chairman of the Presidium, Kim Yong-nam's first act was to nominate Kim Jong-il to the Chair of the National Defence Commission, thereby formalising the succession on 5 September 1998.

At 83, Kim Yong-nam is the regime's institutional memory and, as the Dear Leader rarely leaves the Hermit Kingdom, its top emissary. He visited Algeria, Egypt and Ethiopia in 2007, and Namibia, Angola, Congo-Kinshasa and Uganda in 2008 (AAC Vol 1 No 5). After dropping in on Singapore's S.R. Nathan on 6-8 May 2009, he flew to South Africa for Jacob Zuma's inauguration on 9 May. Hong Joon-pyo of South Korea's ruling Grand National Party announced he would court Kim in Pretoria with a view to Korean reconciliation. Kim's next stop was to pay perhaps a last visit to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.