Skip to content
Placeholder image for when a portrait image is not available

Rim Chun-chu

At the time of his death in April 1988, Rim Chun-chu was a vice president of the DPRK and ranked sixth on the list of the KWP hierarchy.

Biography

Placeholder image for when a portrait image is not available
RIM CHUN-CHU (1912-1988). At the time of his death in April 1988, Rim Chun-chu was a vice president of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and ranked sixth on the list of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) hierarchy. He was born in North Hamgyeong Province. Little is known of his early life, but he fought with Kim Il Sung in the anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in Manchuria during the 1930s, and with Kim, moved to the Soviet Union as Japanese pressure increased around 1940. After his return to Korea in 1945, Rim appeared as chair of the People's Committee (head of the local government) in Gangwon Province in 1946 and became the Gangwon KWP chair in 1950. After the Korean War, he was ambassador to Albania (1957) and Bulgaria (1958). In 1961, he was a member of the auditing committee of the KWP Central Committee, secretary of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) in 1962, and served twice as secretary of the Central People's Committee. In 1983, the Seventh SPA elected him as one of the DPRK's then three vice presidents. In 1982, he was made a "Hero of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" on his 70th birthday. He was apparently a strong supporter of Kim Jong Il as Kim Il Sung's successor, and the younger Kim made a condolence call on the family before the funeral.

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).

Popular Documents

No Documents Were Found for This Resource