Choe Yeong-rim

CHOE YEONG-RIM (1930– ). Premier of the State Council since June 2010. Choe was born in North Hamgyeong Province. He served in the armed forces during the Korean War (1950–53). He then attended the Mangyeongdae Revolutionary School, Kim Il Sung University, and also studied at Moscow University. According to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s news agency, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), he later qualified as an economic engineer. The same source says that he worked as instructor, section chief, vice department director, first vice department director, department director of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), and chief secretary of the Secretaries’ Office of the Geumsusan Assembly Hall. This last post indicates that he was head of the secretariat for the late President Kim Il Sung; the Geumsusan Assembly Hall was where Kim worked when he was alive, and it is now the Geumsusan Memorial Palace, his mausoleum. At some point, Choe became a vice premier of the Administration Council, director of the Central Public Prosecutors Office, and secretary general of the Presidium of the DPRK parliament, the Supreme People’s Assembly, from 2005 to 2009. For a brief period, he became chief secretary of the Pyongyang committee of the KWP, before becoming premier in June 2010, replacing Kim Yeong-il.

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. (Historical Dictionary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, by James E. Hoare, published by RLPG Books, appears by permission of the author and publisher).