“Goebbels of North Korea” Kim Ki-Nam passes away at age 94

May 9, Pyongyang, North Korea Kim Ki-Nam, who was often compared to Nazi propaganda minister Adolf Hitler and called “North Korea’s Goebbels,” died on Wednesday at the age of 94, according to North Korean official media.

The official media said that Kim, who created and implemented authoritarian propaganda for the three generations of the ruling Kim family, passed away from multiple organ failures after a year-long illness. The precise place of his death is still unknown.

The New York Times said that Kim Ki-Nam’s reputation as the creator of North Korea’s propaganda apparatus dates back to the time of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founding leader, and lasted until 2017.

Propaganda, a key component of the Kim dynasty’s authoritarian authority, permeates North Korean media outlets on a daily basis and is completely controlled by the state. Its goal is to maintain a cult of personality around the ruling family among the country’s 26 million inhabitants, the NYT said.

The level of propaganda enforcement is best shown by the required wearing of lapel pins with images of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the grandfather and father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un. According to the survey, these leaders’ portraits grace every home and workplace.

In textbooks and television shows, the leaders are depicted as having magical powers, like turning leaves into boats and pine cones into explosives, the New York Times said. In addition, posters and slogans are all over North Korean towns, warning of an impending invasion by “American imperialists” and advising people to change into “guns and bombs” in order to defend the Kim family’s rule.

Kim Ki-Nam was compared to the notorious Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels for his orchestrations, which were his own creation.

Kim Ki-Nam served the Kim family for three generations and was one of the few remaining nonagenarian officials who survived many purges. North Korean specialists have highlighted that he had a tight friendship with Kim Jong-il and often attended the leader’s late-night meetings.

As a sign of Kim Jong-il’s approval, Kim Ki-nam made history in 2005 when he became the first North Korean official to lay to rest in the national cemetery in South Korea. The NYT article also said that he was the leader of a North Korean delegation that traveled to Seoul in 2009 to offer condolences for the death of Kim Dae-Jung, the former president of South Korea who organized the first inter-Korean summit with Kim Jong-il in 2000.

Kim Ki-Nam was one of the few generals from the People’s Army and leaders of the Workers’ Party who went with Kim Jong-un to carry Kim Jong-il’s casket after his death in 2011.

He gained the confidence of Kim Jong-un by helping the young leader establish his domestic power after the passing of his father.

Early on Wednesday, Kim Jong-un visited Kim Ki-Nam’s grave and offered his condolences. He did so, according to the government’s Korean Central News Agency, “with bitter grief over the loss of a veteran revolutionary who, as a competent official in the party’s ideological field, had remained boundlessly loyal.”