Kim Jong Un’s chief liaison to South Korea has died in a car accident, North Korea’s state-run media reported Wednesday. Kim Yang Gon, 73, was seen by analysts as a “calming voice” who was responsible for negotiations with Seoul over major issues like nuclear weapons and efforts to arrange temporary reunions of relatives separated by the Korean War. The laudatory tone used in the Hermit Kingdom’s official coverage to describe the seasoned foreign-policy hand may signal his death was truly an accident, and not a secret assassination.
