This picture taken and released on May 8, 2024 from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) via KNS shows North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (C) and senior officials expressing their condolences to former Workers’ Party of Korea Vice Chairman Kim Ki Nam, who died at the age of 94 on May 7, during a service in Pyongyang. North Korea’s former propaganda chief, credited with masterminding the personality cult surrounding the ruling Kim dynasty, has died, state media said on May 8, with leader Kim Jong Un attending his funeral. (Photo by KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)

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North Korea’s former propaganda official, Kim Ki-nam, who was considered the architect of the “cult of personality” during the Kim family, died Tuesday at the age of 94, according to what the Korean Central News Agency announced Wednesday.

The official news agency reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un silently mourned the deceased on Wednesday morning, in front of his coffin, “with bitter sadness for the loss of a veteran revolutionary who remained loyal without limits” to the regime.

She explained that Kim Ki-nam, who had been hospitalized since 2022, died due to his advanced age and “a malfunction of several organs.”

Ki-nam was known in particular for heading the incitement and propaganda department in North Korea between 1989 and 2017 after serving as editor-in-chief of the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper in the 1970s.

He also served as Vice Chairman of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party, and was ambassador to Beijing in the 1950s, according to Agence France-Presse.

After studying in the Soviet Union, he began his career during the reign of Kim Il Sung, who held power in Pyongyang from the end of the Japanese occupation in 1948 until his death in 1994. He was considered a close friend of his son and successor, Kim Jong Il (1994-2011), Kim Jong Un’s father. .

Kim Ki-nam had a bad reputation in South Korea, where the media there called him “North Korea’s Goebbels,” in comparison to the German Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, according to the Associated Press.

Kim Ki-nam composed the main slogans of the regime and the speeches of its leaders. He is also considered the architect of the “cult of personality” around the Kim family, which has ruled North Korea with an iron fist for three generations.

After his retirement, he gave the role to Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, in 2018.