Kim Jung-rin’s is called a “walking encyclopedia” on spying on South Korea given his experience in running espionage operations there from the 1950s to the 1980s.

An elementary school teacher before Korea’s 1945 liberation from Japan, he took a special course from the Korean Workers’ Party Central School. He began his political career as head of the party’s chapter in North Hamkyong Province. During the Korean War, he studied at the Advanced Communist Party School in Moscow. After returning home, he conducted spy operations as deputy chairman of the party’s Central Committee throughout the 1980s.

He was named culture minister in 1962, a position closely associated with South Korean relations. In 1969, he was named party secretary for South Korea relations. In the party’s 1970 convention, his appointment as a political cadre facilitated his entry into the government elite. When the 1972 inter-Korean talks began, he negotiated with South Korean counterpart Lee Hu-rak behind the scenes.

When Kim Jong-il was named heir to the North Korean throne, he began tightening his grip on each government branch. Kim Jung-rin was criticized over his spy operations in South Korea and dismissed in 1975. After undergoing disciplinary rehabilitation, he was reinstated in 1978 but after the failed assassination of then South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan in Burma in 1984, he was relegated to president of the (North) Korea Central News Agency. He briefly returned as a party secretary but opted out of intelligence operations covering South Korea. In 1990, he was named party secretary for labor organizations.

Sources say he is clearheaded and highly skilled in political analysis and writing. Experts say his rumored marriage to a daughter of the youngest brother of the late Kim Il-sung could explain his long-time resilience in politics.

Though a party secretary, Kim Jung-rin gradually lost influence in the late 1990s. Since 2000, however, he has frequently accompanied North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to official events.