Paek Nam Sum, DPRK Foreign Ministerm Dead at 78

By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago
SEOUL, South Korea - Paek Nam Sun, North Korea's foreign minister and the country's top diplomat for nearly 10 years, has died at the age of 78, official media reported Wednesday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed his condolences, the North's Korean Central News Agency reported.

The one-sentence dispatch did not provide any more details, including when or how he died. But China's official Xinhua news agency said Paek died Tuesday.Paek has been the North's top diplomat since 1998. News reports have said he was suffering from kidney disease. It was unclear who would succeed him.

Paek's death is not believed likely to lead to any change in North Korea's foreign policy. The North's Foreign Ministry usually implements policies that have been crafted by the ruling Korean Workers' Party. Power is heavily concentrated in Kim's hands, and state officers stray from the official line at their peril.

His most recent overseas trip was to Malaysia for Asia's largest security conference, called ARF, and then Singapore for an official visit in July last year. In previous ARF meetings, Paek met Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell but did not hold such a meeting with Condoleezza Rice in July.

His death came as tensions remained high on the Korean peninsula following the North's Oct. 9 nuclear test. North Korea held talks with the United States and other regional powers last month in the nuclear standoff, but they failed to make any progress.

Ban Ki-moon, who stepped down as South Korea's foreign minister in October to become the new U.N. secretary-general, expressed his condolences on the death of Paek, "with whom he worked for peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula over the years," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York."The secretary-general hopes that the death of foreign minister Paek does not, in any case, hinder the ongoing six-party process or the way for North Korea's foreign policy to open up to the international community," Montas said.Ban, who succeeded Kofi Annan as secretary-general, has said one of his top priorities will be to try to bring peace to the Korean peninsula.

Paek graduated from the prestigious Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, and later participated in talks in the 1970s between the two countries' Red Cross societies over issues such as separated families. Diplomatic involvement with South Korea, the North's wealthy neighbor and former battlefield foe, has always been a key to career advancement for North Korean officials.Paek was also ambassador to Poland in the 1970s.Paek was an elite loyalist who rose over decades through government ranks. He was born in 1929 in North Hamgyong, a province on the Chinese and Russian borders that is home to a coal mine notorious for forced labor as well as a key missile base.