SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Yong-chol, a former North Korean spymaster and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s counterpart in recent diplomatic contacts between the North and the United States, resurfaced in public this week, undermining a South Korean newspaper’s report that he was banished to forced labor in a re-education camp.



The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest daily newspaper, reported on Friday that Mr. Kim had been sent to a re-education camp as part of a political purge of senior North Korean officials held responsible for the breakdown of the second summit meeting held in February between the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Trump.

But some analysts in South Korea quickly questioned the report, saying that it was unlikely for Kim Yong-chol to have been banished because he was still being cited in the North Korean news media in the weeks after the summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, and had retained his vice chairmanship in the ruling Workers’ Party. They said Mr. Kim’s influence appears to have been curtailed because he lost another key party post: heading the party’s important United Front Department, which manages relations with South Korea, as well as intelligence affairs.

By Monday, it appeared that the skeptical analysts’ assessments were correct.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Monday included Kim Yong-chol’s name on a list of officials who accompanied Kim Jong-un to an art performance given by the wives of military officers on Sunday.