- Yon Hyong-muk
Yon Hyong-muk, also spelt as Yong Hyong-muk (born
November 3 ,1931 ; diedOctober 23 ,2005 ) was a longserving politician inNorth Korea and at the height of his career the most powerful person in that country outside the Kim family. He waspremier of North Korea from 1989 until 1992 .He was born in
Kyongwon County and had a strong revolutionary background in his family. Although details about his early childhood are not well-known, it is known than Yon was educated inCzechoslovakia and by the 1950s he was firmly established within the hierarchy of the Korea Workers' Party, which became the only political party in North Korea after theKorean War ended. By 1968, after one of severalpurge s to occur during Kim Il Sung's long reign, Yon was established as one of Kim's most trusted comrades and had become a secretary of the Central Committee of the Party.During the 1970s, Yon further advanced in the Party and by the middle 1980s he was regarded as the fourth most powerful person in North Korea after Kim Il Sung,
Kim Jong-Il , and veteran marshal and defence ministerO Chin-u . He was a candidate member of thePolitburo from the early 1980s and became premier of North Korea in 1989 . During this era, Yon served as Minister of Heavy Industry and this cemented his major role in the North's largearmaments sector.In this period, as
Kim Il Sung andO Chin-u were both already past eighty, Yon took an important role in relations between North andSouth Korea . He worked quite hard in this field as premier and was regarded as the chief negotiator behind the "Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation " (a.k.a. the "South-North Basic Agreement") of 1991. For the rest of the 1990s Yon was the chief figure behind efforts to reconcile the two Koreas. However, by the 2000s Yon was declining in health and his role in North Korean politics had become largely ceremonial by the time he died - presumably ofpancreatic cancer for which he had received treatment inRussia in 2004 at the prestigious hospital, the well protected VIPCentral Clinical Hospital . In 2005 he died.Persondata
NAME=Yon Hyong-muk
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Yong Hyong-muk, Yeon Hyeong-muk, 연형묵
SHORT DESCRIPTION=North Korean politician and negotiator
DATE OF BIRTH=November 3 ,1931
PLACE OF BIRTH=Kyongwon ,North Hamgyong ,North Korea
DATE OF DEATH=October 23 ,2005
PLACE OF DEATH=Pyongyang ?
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