Hong Sung-mu (, born 1 January 1942) is a

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

n nuclear weapons scientist and a

Workers' Party of Korea The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the founding and sole ruling party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea. Founded in 1949 from the merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of ...

(WPK) official working with North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and

space programs This is a list of government agencies engaged in activities related to outer space and space exploration. As of 2022, 77 different government space agencies are in existence, 16 of which have launch capabilities. Six government space agencies ...

. He is the deputy director of the party's

Machine Building Industry Department A machine is a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecules ...

(MBID) and plays a key part in the country's nuclear weapons program. Hong rose to prominence after the 2011

death of Kim Jong-il The death of Kim Jong-il was reported by North Korean state television news on 19 December 2011. The presenter Ri Chun-hee announced that he had died on 17 December at 8:30 am of a massive heart attack while travelling by train to an area ou ...

and succession of

Kim Jong-un Kim Jong-un (; , ; born 8 January 1982) is a North Korean politician who has been Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 2012. He is a son of Kim Jong-il, who was North Korea's sec ...

, after which he has supervised various weapons tests, including the

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

and

January 2016 North Korean nuclear test January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is also the first of seven months to have a length of 31 days. The first day of the month is known as New Year's Day. It is, on average, the coldest month of the ...

s. Hong's involvement in weapons development has landed him on international sanctions lists.

Career

Hong was born on 1 January 1942. He was educated in

Central and Eastern Europe Central and Eastern Europe is a term encompassing the countries in the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe (mostly the Balkans), usually meaning former communist states from the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact in Europe. ...

, and possibly in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

too. Hong plays an important role in North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and

. While Hong's responsibility includes

conventional weapons The terms conventional weapons or conventional arms generally refer to weapons whose ability to damage comes from kinetic, incendiary, or explosive energy and exclude weapons of mass destruction (''e.g.'' nuclear, biological, radiological and ...

, his work focuses on the nuclear weapons program in particular. Hong was formerly the

chief engineer A chief engineer, commonly referred to as "ChEng" or "Chief", is the most senior engine officer of an engine department on a ship, typically a merchant ship, and holds overall leadership and the responsibility of that department..Chief engineer's ...

at the

Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center The Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center is North Korea's major nuclear facility, operating its first nuclear reactors. It is located in Nyongbyon County in North Pyongan Province, about 100 km north of Pyongyang. The center produc ...

. Currently he is the deputy director of the party's

(MBID), where he has worked since the mid-2000s. Since 2010, he has been the number two man of

(WPK) secretary

Pak To-chun General Pak To-chun ( ko, 박도춘; 9 March 1944 — 27 July 2022) was a politician of North Korea. According to his official biography, Pak was born in Jagang Province in 1944 and joined the Korean People's Army in 1960 (becoming a general i ...

. Hong's background is in manufacture and production rather than development and research, as opposed to his superior in the MBID,

Ju Kyu-chang Ju Kyu-chang (25 November 1928 – 3 September 2018) was a North Korean politician, who served as the director of the Workers' Party of Korea's (WPK) Machine-Building Industry Department. Ju was reportedly the head of North Korea's nuclear and ...

. Hong's career took off in earnest after the 2011

, the country's leader, and the succession of

. Hong was number 126 on the funeral committee list of Kim Jong-il. Since 2012, he has accompanied Kim on the occasion of various rocket test launches, and on

on-the-spot guidance "On-the-spot guidance" (also "guidance tours" or "field guidance") is a term used in the North Korean mass media to describe appearances by the supreme leader of North Korea, often at sites related to the military or to industry, at which the lea ...

tours since the beginning of 2013. , Hong is an alternate member of the

Central Committee of the WPK The Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea ( ko, 조선로동당 중앙위원회) is the highest party body between national meetings of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), the ruling party of North Korea. According to WPK rules, the ...

. Hong played a key part supervising the

and

s. He has appeared in the

North Korean media The mass media in North Korea is amongst the most strictly controlled in the world. The constitution nominally provides for freedom of speech and the press. However, the government routinely disregards these rights, and seeks to mold information ...

in connection to those tests, the December 2012 launch of the

Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 () was a North Korean Earth observation satellite which, according to the DPRK, was for weather forecast purposes, and whose launch was widely portrayed in the West to be a veiled ballistic missile test. The satellite was la ...

satellite, and the country's 2017 nuclear test. Hong and his fellow associate in the nuclear weapons program,

Ri Hong-sop Ri Hong-sop (리홍섭,born 1940) is a North Korean scientist. Ri is a former director of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. In 2005 he served on the program committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Nuclear Energy and ...

, are known collectively as North Korea's "nuclear duo". The two were the first in line to receive a medal from Kim Jong-un for success in the January 2016 test. Hong's role in the nuclear program has landed him on the sanctions list of either the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, or

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. The

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

has added Hong on its "list of persons and entities responsible for the DPRK's nuclear-related, ballistic-missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related programmes or persons or entities acting on their behalf or at their direction, or entities owned or controlled by them, subject to restrictive measures". According to professor

Yang Moo-jin Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration p ...

of the

University of North Korean Studies The University of North Korean Studies () is a university in Seoul, South Korea that was founded in 2005 by merging Kyungnam University's North Korean studies department founded in 1997 and the Far East Problems Research Centre (극동문제연� ...

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 ...

, Hong is "spearheading the nuclear development programme as a senior party official". North Korea expert Michael Madden calls Hong part of a last generation of "top-level officials ... who studied in the old communist world".

Works

References

External links

Photo
at the ''

Sunday Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Hong, Sung-mu Living people 1942 births Place of birth missing (living people) North Korean nuclear physicists 20th-century North Korean scientists 21st-century North Korean scientists Members of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea