N. Korea's senior official handling inter-Korean affairs dies

SEOUL, Dec. 30 (Yonhap) -- Kim Yang-gon, North Korea's top party official handling inter-Korean affairs, was killed in a traffic accident, Pyongyang's state media said Wednesday. He was 73. Kim, a secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and a member of the party's Central Committee Politbureau, died in car accident at 6:15 a.m. Tuesday at age 73, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency. North Korea said it will hold a state funeral for Kim on Thursday, to be headed by the North's leader Kim Jong-un. The report of Kim's sudden death came weeks after the two Koreas ended high-level talks on Dec. 12 without producing any agreement on mending ties. Kim Yang-gon was one of the two North Korean ranking officials who attended the rare inter-Korean high-level talks in August following heightened tension sparked by a land mine blast near the inter-Korean border blamed on North Korea. The two Koreas reached a rare deal on Aug. 25 to defuse military tension and make efforts to promote inter-Korean civilian exchanges. North Korea announced a list of members for the funeral committee for Kim, including Choe Ryong-hae, a senior secretary of the ruling party and a key aide to the North's leader. In November, Choe was sent to a rural farm as punishment for his mishandling of a newly built hydroelectric power plant project. The inclusion of his name on the list indicates that Choe has been reinstated.