Kim Yong-nam, who served as North Korea’s nominal head of state for more than two decades, was a unique political figure who survived three generations of dictatorship, evading the purges or demotions typical of the opaque elite of the communist regime.
Kim, who died on November 3 at the age of 97, was the “affable” public face of North Korea on the international stage, being the country’s second most powerful man as the president of Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly from 1998 to 2019.
He never lost favour with the ruling Kim dynasty which has controlled North Korea since 1948, serving the Kim family from founder Kim Il Sung to his son Kim Jong Il and his grandson Kim Jong Un.
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