Kim Yong Nam, a quintessential North Korean bureaucrat whose lifelong loyalty to the ruling Kim dynasty allowed him to serve as the country’s ceremonial head of state for two decades, has died, state media reported Tuesday.
The Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday that Kim Yong Nam, former president of the Presidium of North Korea’s rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly, died Monday of multiple organ failure at the age of 97.
Kim Yong Nam served as head of the Supreme People’s Assembly from 1998 to April 2019. That post is North Korea’s nominal head of state, though the true power was held by the Kim family that has ruled the North since its formal foundation in 1948. (CNN)