Kim Yong-nam
North Korean politician (1928–2025)
Kim Yong-nam (Korean: 김영남; February 4, 1928 – November 3, 2025) was a North Korean politician who served as the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea, from 1998 until 2019. Due to holding the office, he was considered the head of state of North Korea; the country's constitution was amended once he left office in 2019 to transfer this position to the president of the State Affairs Commission, Kim Jong Un. Previously, he had served as minister of foreign affairs from 1983 to 1998. He was elected a member of the Presidium of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in 2010.
Life and career
Accounts of Kim's early life vary. According to Fyodor Tertitskiy of NK News, he was born Kim Myong-sam to a Korean-Chinese family in the village of Dapu Shihe in Manchuria, in what is now the Liaoning province of China, on February 4, 1928. Kim's official biography states that he was born in Pyongyang, Korea, Empire of Japan (now North Korea). According to North Korean state media, his family resisted Japanese occupation. His family came from the Jeonju Kim clan, making him a very distant relative of the Kim family. He came to North Korea with the Chinese People's Volunteer Army during the Korean War and chose to stay.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kim Yong-nam” as north Korean politician (1928–2025). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as north Korean politician (1928–2025). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110456. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2025, 1998 and 2019.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Kim Yong-nam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.