Kim was born in 1934 in
South Pyongan Province, when the
Korean Peninsula was still
under Japanese rule. He was elevated to the WPK's Central Committee in October 1980. He was a recipient of the
Order of Kim Il Sung, the highest
decoration of the North Korean government. According to author
Don Oberdorfer, he was flamboyant and was demoted in the mid-1980s for decadent behavior. However, his career was saved because of his friendship with
Kim Jong Il and his sister
Kim Kyong-hui. In 1992, he visited
New York City to prepare for
North Korea's accession to the United Nations and held the highest-level US-DPRK diplomatic meetings to that time with
Arnold Kanter,
Richard Solomon,
Douglas Paal, and
James Lilley of the
U.S. State Department. Kim played an instrumental role in the planning of the
first Inter-Korean summit between
Kim Dae-jung and
Kim Jong Il in June 2000. He came to the South in September that year as part of an official Northern delegation, and inspected
POSCO facilities in
Pohang; he was the first secretary of the WPK to take an inspection tour in the South since
Ho Dam in 1985. After reportedly being involved in a car accident in June 2003, he was hospitalised, and succumbed to his injuries on 23 October 2003. ==References==