Top N.K. defector found dead, no sign of foul play

Hwang Jang-yop, chief architect of North Korea’s guiding Juche ideology who took asylum in South Korea 13 years ago, was found dead Sunday at his home inSeoul, with no apparent sign of foul play, police here said. He was 87. 


A former secretary of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, Hwang was the highest-ranking North Korean official to have defected to the South. 

“Hwang was found dead in the bathroom of his home in Nonhyeon-dong at around 9:30 a.m. Sunday (by one of his security guards),” Seoul’s Gangnam Police Station told a press briefing. 

“There was no sign of a break-in. We found no indications of foul play (in Hwang’s death,)” it said, adding that he likely died of heart attack. 

The authorities plan to conduct an autopsy to determine the exact cause of death. 

Born in 1923, Hwang graduated from Pyongyang’s top Kim Il-sung University, and studied philosophy in Moscow in 1949. He became a philosophy professor of the university in 1952 at the age of 29. 

Since then, Hwang played a key role in crafting the communist state’s ruling ideology of Juche which stresses self-reliance and served as a close aide to both Kim Il-sung, the late founder of the communist country, and his son and current leader Jong-il. He even tutored Jong-il personally.

Hwang Jang-yop