Former formal head of North Korea Kim Yong Nam has died at the age of 97.
The cause of Kim's death was cancer. His funeral will be held with state honors, and the current leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, is part of the organizing committee for the ceremony. He also attended the mourning event and laid a wreath at his monument. Kim Yong Nam was born in 1928 in Pyongyang. From 1946 to 1959, he studied in the Soviet Union, where he attended the historical faculty at the universities of Tomsk and Rostov-on-Don. In 1963, he began his diplomatic career, becoming