Kim Hong-il (general)
Kim Hong-il (23 September 1898 – 8 August 1980) was a Korean independence activist and a general of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Korean War, who later became a diplomat and politician in South Korea. Born in North Pyongan, he did his early schooling in China and Korea, and had a brief career as a teacher before his connections with the nascent Korean independence movement led to his imprisonment. He fled into exile in China in 1918, and served in the Kuomintang's National Revolutionary Army from 1926 to 1948, following which he moved to the newly-independent South Korea to join the Republic of Korea Army. He commanded South Korea's I Corps during the first year of the Korean War, and was then sent to Taipei as South Korea's ambassador to the Republic of China, which by then had retreated to Taiwan. His assignment there ultimately lasted nine years. He returned to South Korea in 1960 following the April Revolution which ended the rule of Syngman Rhee, and served briefly as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Park Chung-hee junta. He ran for the National Assembly, first unsuccessfully in 1960 and 1963, and was then elected in 1967 and became a major figure in the opposition New Democratic Party.
Death and state funeral of Kim Il-sung
On the late morning of 8 July 1994, Kim Il-sung collapsed from a sudden heart attack. After the heart attack, his son Kim Jong-il ordered the team of doctors who were constantly at his father's side to leave, and arranged for the country's best doctors to be flown in from Pyongyang. After several hours, the doctors from Pyongyang arrived, and despite their efforts to save him, Kim Il-sung died. His death was declared thirty hours later, respecting the traditional Confucian mourning period.