Ri Su-yong was a 'father figure' and mentor to Kim Jong-un in Switzerland, so where is he now?
Rumors surrounding North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's ill heath have intensified after media reports suggest that he has died or is in a vegetative state following heart surgery.
CNN first reported that Kim is in "grave danger" following a heart surgery according to a US official who also said that the country is closely monitoring the situation. A later report from a Japanese magazine stated that the North Korean leader was in a "vegetative state." Further unconfirmed reports emerged that Kim had died this week.
However, South Korean officials insisted that the despot was "alive and well" and is currently staying in his holiday resort in Wonsan on the North Korean coast.
Amid the rumors surrounding the North Korean dictator, the question arises as to where his mentor and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ri Su-yong, also known as Ri Chol, is. Ri, who serves as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA), has been absent from a number of key political events in recent weeks.
His time as a North Korean diplomat
Ri first joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1970s and has long been a close family friend and confidant of North Korea’s ruling regime. Born in 1940, he was a school friend of Kim’s father, the eventual dictator King Jong-il.
Ri eventually became the North Korean representative to the United Nations mission in Geneva in the 1980s and was the North Korean representative to Switzerland in the 1990s. It was during this period that the diplomat grew closer to Kim when the latter was in Switzerland for his education.
Ri was instrumental in building North Korea's relations with western entities. “He always struck me as very savvy and sophisticated for a North Korean diplomat. Sophisticated in the sense that he knows the score,” one Geneva-based official who attended frequent diplomatic meetings with Ri told Reuters.
“His formulations were always within acceptable parameters; he was politically correct towards his own country. He was keeping open channels of communication," the official said. "He was very pleasant, urbane, not a thug. He was always reputed to be the family’s fixer, whatever needed fixing.”
Ri also helped facilitate a multi-million dollar deal between North Korea and Egyptian communications firm Orascom, which runs the country’s cellular network. After he returned from Switzerland, he served as the head of the investment committee of the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) and worked to attract foreign investment.
Mentor and Protector to Kim Jong-il's sons
According to a memoir written by Song Hye-rang, a distant relative of the Kim family, Ri was also sent to Switzerland to give guidance to Kim Jong-il's eldest son, Kim Jong-nam. Kim Jong-un's powerful uncle, Jang Song-thaek, recruited Ri to travel to Switzerland to seek out a suitable residence, wrote Song.
Driven by paranoid fears that South Korean spies might kidnap the dictator's son, Ri spent his early days in Switzerland in a rented apartment across from the school's main gate and monitored the same through a pair of binoculars.
Later, after he was convinced that the family's residence was under surveillance, he made the family move. “He placed clubs in various places in the house and instructed us to use them,” Song wrote. “He made us constantly feel insecure with stories of being followed and by reminding us that someone was always watching us”.
He chaperoned a young Kim, who in the 1990s was enrolled in the International School of Berne under the pseudonym Pak Chol and took part in school ski trips but spent much time at home or dining out with Ri. Michael Madden of North Korea Leadership Watch has called him a "father figure" to Kim.
After Kim Jong-il's death in 2011, Ri took on an expanded portfolio in Kim Jong-un's government. Ri became North Korea's top diplomat in 2014 and even attended the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the time when the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was being discussed.
Ri was only the third North Korean foreign minister to attend the UNGA after Kim Yong-nam in 1992 and Paek Nam-sun in 1999 and he was the first to do so in 15 years.
Where is Ri Su-yong now?
Earlier this year, speculation rose that Ri had been demoted when he did not appear in a group photo of top officials of the WPK taken on December 31st, 2019 following a high-profile ruling Party Plenum.
Ri was last seen in state media coverage of the Party Plenum first released on January 1 this year. He was seated in all four days of the event on stage behind Kim among the Politburo leadership, before the group photo at the end of the event where he did not show up.
Earlier this month, Kim carried out a major reshuffle of the State Affairs Commission. Ri, director of the party’s International Relations Department, took a step back, while Kim Hyung Jun, the newly appointed chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Ri Son-gwon, who became foreign minister in January, joined the Politburo and the State Affairs Commission.
However, amid various, conflicting reports of Kim's health, Ri is prominently absent as North Korea's future remains uncertain.