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North Korean propaganda chief dies aged 94
Kim Ki-nam was known as “the North Korean Goebbels” in the South due to his role as head of propaganda department.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the funeral ceremony for Kim Ki Nam, one of the longest-serving North Korean officials who served all three generations of its leaders cementing their political legitimacy and heading the country's propaganda apparatus, in Pyongyang, North Korea, May 9, 2024 in this photo released by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. KCNA via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THIS IMAGE. NO THIRD PARTY SALES. SOUTH KOREA OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN SOUTH KOREA.
Kim Ki-nam, the propaganda chief who served all three generations of North Korean leaders and cemented their political legitimacy, has died. Kim Ki-nam died on Tuesday aged 94 from multiple organ failure, official KCNA news agency reported.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, visited the funeral hall on to pay tribute “with bitter grief over the loss of a veteran revolutionary who had remained boundlessly loyal” to the country until the very end, it said.
Kim Ki-nam in charge of the cult of the Kim family dynasty
Kim Ki-nam is credited with masterminding the cult of the Kim family dynasty. State media described him as “a veteran of our party and the revolution, a prestigious theoretician and a prominent political activist”.
The ruling Kim family are revered in the North as the “Paektu bloodline”, named after the country’s highest mountain and supposed birthplace of the late leader Kim Jong-il.
In the 1970s, Kim Ki-nam was in charge of Pyongyang’s official mouthpiece, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper. He became head of the North’s propaganda department in 1985, according to South Korean government data. He retired in 2017 and Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, took over.
He was very close to Kim Jong-il
Kim Ki-nam’s role as the country’s chief propagandist earned him notoriety in the South, where media nicknamed him the North Korean Goebbels, after Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
All the propaganda and agitation strategies of the Kim dynasty came from Kim Ki-nam’s mind. He was one of the very few North Korean officials to have visited the South, leading a funeral delegation in 2009 after the death of president Kim Dae-jung who opened an era of reconciliation with Pyongyang with his Sunshine Policy.
Kim Ki-nam exerted tremendous influence on policy and personnel and was a key architect of the ruling Workers’ party’s political foundation. He was particularly close to Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, and was believed to be his “drinking buddy.
