North Korea: Kim family’s master propagandist dies at 94
North Korea’s former propaganda master Kim Ki Nam has died at the age of 94, said state media.
He died due to old age and “multiple organ dysfunction” for which he had been receiving treatment since 2022, said KCNA.
He had spent decades leading propaganda efforts in the totalitarian state, including building a personality cult around the ruling Kim dynasty.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended his funeral early on Wednesday and paid tribute to the “veteran revolutionary who had remained boundlessly loyal” to the regime, the report added.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency likened him to Nazi Germany’s propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels, widely known for his mantra “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”.
Kim Ki Nam had no blood relations with the ruling patriarchy despite sharing the family name that is among the most common in North and South Korea.
He was appointed deputy director of Pyongyang’s Propaganda and Agitation Department in 1966, where he worked closely with Kim Jong Il, the predecessor and father of current leader Kim Jong Un.
Kim Ki Nam later rose to lead the department, playing a crucial role in shaping the country’s messaging, as he served what has now become the world’s longest-running family dynasty.
He reportedly had a close relationship with Kim Jong Il, with several media reports describing them as “drinking buddies”.
In the 1970s, he was put in charge of the state mouthpiece, Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
He later led initiatives to establish the role of Kim Il Sung – widely seen as North Korea’s founding father – in the country’s history, and to support Kim Jong Il’s succession of the leadership, according to North Korea Leadership Watch, a site on Pyongyang’s political culture.
The propaganda department Kim Ki Nam oversaw maintained a stranglehold over communication and information flows in an out of the state.
South Korean and Western entertainment, including music and movies, are banned.
Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean early this year showed the public sentencing of two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas.
State television had also blurred the trousers of British presenter Alan Titchmarsh in a BBC gardening programme because jeans are seen as a symbol of Western – and specifically American – imperialism in the country.
Read more on BBC
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