North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun, the public face of the reclusive communist regime, has died aged 77, official media said on Wednesday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il sent a wreath on Wednesday to Paek’s bier, ”expressing deep condolences over his death”, the Korean Central News Agency reported.
It was the first mention by state media of the death of Paek, who had been foreign minister since 1998. The agency did not say when he died or what the cause was.
A spokesperson for South Korea’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, confirmed the report.
A foreign ministry official in Seoul told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity that Paek had suffered chronic kidney problems.
Analysts said his death would not alter the North’s strategy in sensitive negotiations over its nuclear-weapons programme. The six-nation talks resumed last month, but ended without apparent progress and with no firm date for a subsequent meeting.
”I don’t think his death will have any impact on the six-party talks,” Professor Kim Keun-Shik of the University for North Korean Studies said.
”Paek has been acting like a figurehead foreign minister. [Deputy Foreign Minister] Kang Sok-Ju has been in charge of the nuclear talks.”
Paek, a graduate of Kim Il-Sung University, in 1968 became vice-director of the ruling party’s international affairs department.
He took part in inter-Korean talks organised by the Red Cross at the border village of Panmunjom in 1972 and also visited Seoul four times in the 1990s for bilateral discussions.
He was ambassador to Poland from 1974 to 1979 and in 1990 became a member of the legislature known as the Supreme People’s Assembly.
His last known foreign trip was to Malaysia in July last year for the Association of South-east Asian Nations Regional Forum, a regional security grouping of which North Korea is a member. He reportedly received medical treatment in Kuala Lumpur at the time, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. — Sapa-AFP