The Soviet-Korean general who signed the Korean Armistice at Panmunjom
At Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, General Nam Il and Lieutenant General Harrison barely acknowledged each other as they signed eighteen copies of the armistice. In those ten minutes that stopped three years of war, he was the face of North Korea.
A Koryo-saram born in the Russian Far East, he was deported with his family to Central Asia in 1937 and served as a Soviet Army officer at Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin. Dispatched to northern Korea in 1946, he became a close aide to Kim Il Sung, and when the Korean War broke out he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Korean People's Army. From 1951 he led the communist delegation at the Panmunjom armistice talks for two years and on 27 July 1953 signed the Korean Armistice Agreement as the KPA's senior delegate, becoming the face of North Korea to the world. After the war he served as Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier, surviving the purges that eliminated most of his Soviet-Korean colleagues, but died in a suspicious car crash in 1976.
Career Timeline
- 1939–1946Teacher and education official in USSR; served as Soviet Army captain in the German-Soviet War
- 1946–1950Dispatched to northern Korea, rose to Deputy Minister of Education
- 1950–1953KPA Chief of Staff; chief communist delegate at armistice talks
- 1953Signed the Korean Armistice Agreement for the KPA, 27 July
- 1953–1959Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1957–1976Deputy Premier of the DPRK Cabinet
- 1966–1972Minister of Railways; Chairman of the State Construction Committee
- 1972–1976State Administrative Council Vice Premier; Chairman of the State Light Industry Committee