Name   Kang Song-san Sex   Male Date of Birth   March 3, 1931 Place of Birth   Kyongsong, North Hamkyong Province Posts Held Premier of the State Administration Council Claim to Fame Technocrat Education Mankyongdae Revolutionary Institute, Kim Il Sung University, Czech Technical University Profile A mechanical engineering major in college, Kang Song-san is a technocrat who helped lead the North’s drive towards pragmatism after gaining the confidence of the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. As a top administrative official, he has filled a number of important provincial and central government posts. After studying at Czech Technical University in Prague, he began his career at the Nampo branch of the Korean Workers’ Party and served as supervising director, section leader and chief of the organizational bureau of the party’s Central Committee. Working his way up to director and section leader, he became chief secretary of the party’s chapter in Jagang Province in 1969. In the same year, he was named chief secretary of the party’s Pyongyang chapter and was elected mayor of the capital a year later. In 1973, he joined the committee’s elite as a cadre candidate. Two years later, he was appointed chairman of the Transportation and Postal Committee of the State Administration Council and was promoted to council premier in 1984. In 1986, however, Kang was forced out of power over his agricultural reform policy. To increase agricultural production, he had adopted an incentive system in farming—a pioneering attempt at privatization. After the North blamed the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in China on privatization and incentives to farmers, Pyongyang reinforced the collective farm system. Thus Kang was forced to step down to take responsibility for his reform. His 1992 reemergence as council premier led to speculation of the North’s return to pragmatism. After his son-in-law fled North Korea in 1994, however, Kang was rumored to have been purged but survived. Nevertheless, his era drew to a close with Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994. Kang remained the council’s nominal premier during the transitional period until Hong Song-nam took over in 1998, and has since withdrawn from public view.

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