The ‘Goebbels of North Korea’, one of the oldest officials of the Kim dynasty, has died

One of North Korea’s longest-serving officials, Kim Ki Nam, who ran the state’s propaganda apparatus and helped build cults of personality around the country’s three dynastic leaders, died on Tuesday at the age of 94. announced the official KCNA news agency, quoted by Reuters, writes Mediafax.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Kim’s casket on Wednesday to pay his respects “with bitter grief for the loss of a veteran revolutionary who remained boundlessly loyal” to the country until the end, the agency said. North Korea’s official news agency said Kim Jong Un will head the state funeral committee for Kim Ki Nam, who will be laid to rest on Thursday.

Kim Ki Nam rose to the top of the North’s propaganda machine, becoming its deputy chief in 1966 and then chief in 1985 during the rule of Kim Il Sung, according to South Korean government data. He retired in 2017. Kim wielded enormous influence over policy and personnel and was a key architect of the political foundation of the ruling Workers’ Party, according to North Korea expert Michael Madden of the Stimson Center.

North Korean Goebbels

KCNA said Kim Ki Nam, a former secretary of the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, “has devoted himself to the sacred struggle to defend and strengthen the ideological purity of our revolution and to firmly guarantee the stable victory of the socialist cause.” The agency said he died Tuesday after being treated for age-related ailments and multiple organ dysfunction over the past year.

Kim Ki Nam’s role as the country’s chief propagandist earned him notoriety in South Korea, where the media nicknamed him the “North Korean Goebbels,” after Nazi German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

Kim Ki Nam was one of seven senior officials who joined Kim Jong Un to accompany late leader Kim Jong Il’s hearse after his death in 2011.

Kim Ki Nam was a professor at Kim Il Sung University and editor-in-chief of the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper before taking senior positions in the propaganda departments of the ruling Workers’ Party since the 1980s.