Pioneer of NK Studies Dies
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Kim Chang-soon, director of the Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul, died of a chronic illness Tuesday. He was 86.
Kim, a former North Korean journalist, has been recognized as the ``pioneer'' of North Korean studies in South Korea.
Born in Uiju, North Pyeongan Province, he was a journalist in the North before he fled the country about six months into the three-year Korean War in 1950.
Kim was a senior editorial writer for the communist regime's newspaper, Minju Chosun, and had been once granted the rare opportunity of interviewing the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.
He said he learned first hand the ``deceptive nature'' of North Korea's communism when he was imprisoned on charges of ``anti-revolutionary'' crimes in 1949.
In the early 1970s, Kim became the chief director of the private North Korean think tank in the South after spending several years with the now-defunct Naewoe Affairs Research Institute run by the Seoul government.
The area of North Korea studies was almost like a ``barren land'' in South Korea before Kim devoted himself to it as the head of the state-funded institute in 1962.
In an interview with Japan's Kyodo News in the early 2000s, Kim said his hardships and inhumane treatment in North Korean prisons were almost ``beyond description'' and it made him become an incisive critic of North Korean communism and its followers.
He is survived by his wife, Jin Yong-joo, and two daughters.
A funeral service will be held at the Asan Medical Center in southern Seoul. His body will be buried at the Tongil Park in Paju near the inter-Korean border today. For more information, call 02-3010-2294.