Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s long​time former ceremonial head of state whose loyalty shielded him from frequent political purges and enabled him to serve the country’s​ ruling family for three generations, died on Monday. He was 97.

长期担任朝鲜礼仪性国家元首的金永南于周一逝世，享年97岁。他的忠诚让他躲过了频繁的政治清洗，得以为该国统治家族的三代人效力。

The country’s official Korean Central News Agency said the cause was multiple organ failure resulting from cancer. North Korea’s top leader, Kim Jong-un, visited Mr. Kim’s bier early Tuesday to lay a wreath and express deep condolences, the news agency said.

朝鲜官方媒体朝中社表示，金永南的死因是癌症引发的多器官衰竭。朝中社还称，朝鲜最高领导人金正恩于周二早些时候前往金永南灵前敬献花圈，致以深切哀悼。

Mr. Kim stood apart for his ability to stay in favor of the ruling Kim family, to which he was not related and which has ruled North Korea ​as a totalitarian dictatorship since its founding at the end of World War II. Mr. Kim served on the ruling Workers’ Party’s Politburo from 1978 to 2019, when he retired from public service.

金永南的特别之处在于他能始终获得统治朝鲜的金氏家族的信任，自“二战”结束朝鲜建国以来，金氏家族一直以极权独裁方式统治该国（金永南与该家族并无血缘关系）。1978年至2019年，金永南担任执政党朝鲜劳动党的中央政治局委员，直至2019年从公职岗位退休。

His career spanned the governments of Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea; his son, Kim Jong-il; and his grandson, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Kim’s longevity was even more remarkable because in the monolithic tenure of the ruling family, senior officials outside ​the top leader’s immediate kin are ultimately considered expendable and are frequently purged and sent to labor camps.

他的政治生涯跨越了朝鲜三代领导人时期：建国者金日成、金日成之子金正日，以及金正日之子金正恩。在金氏家族集权统治的背景下，最高领导人直系亲属以外的高级官员终会被视为可替代者，常遭清洗并被送往劳改营，因此金永南的长期任职显得尤为罕见。

By the time he retired in 2019, Kim Yong-nam had also served as president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament​, for 21 years.

截至2019年退休时，金永南在21年的时间里担任朝鲜最高人民会议常任委员会委员长——最高人民会议是朝鲜的橡皮图章议会。

That post made Mr. Kim the ceremonial head of state for North Korea. During the reign of the reclusive Kim Jong-il, who was North Korea’s top leader from 1994 until his death in 2011, he often led government delegates overseas. He also received credentials from foreign diplomats newly posted to Pyongyang. When the then-South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, visited North Korea in 2007, he and Mr. Roh rode through central Pyongyang in an open limousine, as hundreds of thousands of spectators were mobilized to line the streets waving paper flowers and shouting “Hurray!”

这一职位使金永南成为朝鲜的礼仪性国家元首。在深居简出、于1994年至2011年担任朝鲜最高领导人的金正日执政期间，金永南常率政府代表团出访海外，也会接受外国新派驻平壤外交官递交的国书。2007年，时任韩国总统卢武铉访问朝鲜时，金永南与卢武铉乘坐敞篷豪华轿车穿行平壤市中心，数十万民众被组织在街道两侧，手持纸花高呼“万岁！”

But Mr. Kim always operated in the shadow of the ​ruling Kim family. His behavior offered a model for North Korean officialdom, according to defectors​ from the county.

但金永南始终在金氏统治家族的阴影之下行事。据朝鲜脱北者透露，他的行事风格为朝鲜官员群体提供了范本。

朝鲜官方媒体提供的一张照片显示，朝鲜领导人金正恩（左三）在朝鲜某未公开地点凭吊金永南的遗体。

In 2018, he appeared openly deferential to a junior colleague — Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of Kim Jong-un — while he was leading a North Korean delegation to South Korea to attend the Winter Olympics. He was seen asking Ms. Kim to sit on a sofa in an airport V.I.P. lounge before he did. He sat first only after Ms. Kim, 60 years his junior, indicated that he could do so.

2018年，金永南率朝鲜代表团前往韩国出席平昌冬奥会期间，曾公开对一位资历比自己浅的官僚——金正恩颇具影响力的妹妹金与正——表现出谦恭姿态。当时有画面显示，在机场贵宾休息室，金永南请金与正先落座，直到比他年轻60岁的金与正示意他可以坐，他才坐下。

“I found Kim Yong​-nam a puzzling figure. In greetings before business began, he was cordial and relaxed, but once at work, he relentlessly followed his script​,” Don Oberdorfer, the late American journalist who had met ​Mr. Kim, wrote in ​his book “The Two Koreas.”

曾与金永南会面的已故美国记者唐·奥伯多弗在其著作《两个朝鲜》(The Two Koreas)中写道：“我觉得金永南是个令人费解的人物。在正式议事前的寒暄中，他亲切而放松，但一旦进入工作状态，就会严格按照既定脚本行事。”

Mr. Oberdorfer quoted a former North Korean diplomat as saying​, “If Kim Il​-sung was pointing to a wall and said there is a door, Kim Yong​-nam would believe that and try to go through it​.”

奥伯多弗还引用一位前朝鲜外交官的话说：“如果金日成指着一堵墙说那里有一扇门，金永南就会深信不疑并且试图穿过去。”

“Yet by all accounts,” Mr. Oberdorfer wrote, “he is highly intelligent and, due to his high position and prestige within the system, an important behind-the-scenes figure in Pyongyang.”

“但所有人都认为，”奥伯多弗写道，“他智商很高，在体制内的高位和声望也很高，是平壤政坛的一位重要幕后人物。”

Mr. Kim was born in 1928, when Korea was ​still a colony of Japan. He joined North Korea’s foreign service in the 1950s after studying in Moscow. He rose through the ranks of the party, becoming party secretary for international affairs in 1975 and foreign minister in 1983. He survived​ many crises in North Korean diplomacy, including the Russian and Chinese decisions to establish diplomatic ties with rival South Korea in the early 1990s.​

金永南出生于1928年，当时朝鲜半岛仍是日本殖民地。20世纪50年代，他在莫斯科留学后加入朝鲜外交部门。他在党内逐步晋升，1975年出任党中央国际部部长，1983年担任外交部长。他经历了朝鲜外交史上的多次危机，包括20世纪90年代初俄罗斯和中国先后与朝鲜的对手韩国建立外交关系。

He ​helped Kim Jong-un​ establish his leadership in the wake of his father’s death.​ When he read a eulogy at the funeral of Kim Jong-il in 2011, he urged North Koreans to rally around the dead leader’s son. Later that year at a huge rally in Pyongyang, it was Mr. Kim who announced that Kim Jong-un was the new “supreme leader of our party, military and people.”

金正日去世后，金永南协助金正恩巩固领导地位。2011年，他在金正日的葬礼上致悼词，呼吁朝鲜民众团结在已故领袖的儿子身边。同年，在平壤举行的一场大规模集会上，正是由金永南宣布金正恩成为朝鲜新一任“党、军队和人民最高领导人”。

When he led the North Korean delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics, Mr. Kim became the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the South at the time.​ His trip helped thaw inter-Korean relations, which lay the groundwork for Kim Jong-un’s meetings with the former South Korean leader, Moon Jae-in, in 2018 and President Trump in 2019, for which the North Korean leader stepped onto South Korean soil.

2018年率朝鲜代表团出席冬奥会时，金永南成为当时访问韩国的最高级别朝鲜官员。他的这一次出访为朝韩关系缓和发挥了作用，也为金正恩后续的外交活动奠定了基础——2018年金正恩与韩国前总统文在寅会面，2019年又与美国前总统特朗普会面，期间金正恩还踏上了韩国领土。

“Comrade Kim Yong-nam​ lived a life of glory and honor in the bosom of the party, and the leader and his life shined with clean loyalty and high competence​,” state media said on Tuesday.

周二，朝鲜官方媒体表示：“金永南同志在党的怀抱中度过了光荣而崇高的一生，他的领导风范与人生历程闪耀着纯粹的忠诚与卓越的才能。”

Chung Dong-young, a South Korean Cabinet minister in charge of relations with North Korea, issued a statement of condolences on Tuesday, recognizing Mr. Kim’s role in creating an inter-Korean rapprochement in 2018.

韩国负责对朝事务的内阁官员郑东泳周二发表悼词，认可金永南在2018年推动朝韩和解过程中所发挥的作用。