Kim Ki Nam, North Korea’s propaganda chief who helped build a cult of personality for the last three rulers of the totalitarian state, has died at the age of 94. According to North Korea’s official news agency, his body was visited early Wednesday morning at a funeral hall in the capital Pyongyang by current dictator Kim Jong-un to pay his respects “with bitter sorrow at the loss of a revolutionary veteran who remained unstintingly loyal to the country” until the very end. He is said to lead the state funeral committee himself, AP writes.
The state agency said Kim Ki Nam, a former secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee, “devoted everything he could to the sacred struggle to defend and strengthen the ideological purity of our revolution and firmly guaranteed the stable victory of the socialist cause.” According to available information, he lost his battle with cancer on Tuesday, which was compounded by his advanced age.
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Kim Ki Nam has earned notoriety in South Korea for his role as the country’s chief propagandist, with the South Korean media nicknaming him “North Korea’s Goebbels” after Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In 2009, he also led a delegation that attended the funeral of former South Korean President Kim Tae-jung in South Korea, who sought to forge relations with the North and held a summit with former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the father of the current ruler.
Kim Ki-nam was one of seven senior officials who, along with Kim Jong-un, accompanied late leader Kim Jong-il’s hearse after his death in 2011, Reuters reports.
According to North Korea expert Michael Madden of the Stimson Center, Kim wielded enormous influence over policy and personnel and was a key architect of the political foundations of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. He was particularly close to Kim Jong-il and was even considered his “drinking buddy”.
