North Korean propaganda chief who helped “deify” the Kim family has died | Obituary

Kim Ki-nam, one of the most important propaganda chiefs of the North Korean regime in recent decades, died on Tuesday at the age of 94, victim of a prolonged illness, reported KCNA, the North Korean news agency.

Kim served the three generations of leaders – Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un – of the country, having been one of the main responsible for the campaign of “deification” and cult of the personality of each of the members of the “ Mount Paektu Dynasty”, the “royal family” that has ruled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) since 1948.

He was particularly close to Kim Jong-il, having been described by several international media outlets as a “drinking companion” of the father of the current Supreme Leader of North Korea, who died in 2011, and who organized large parties for the political elite. and North Korean military.

“Kim Ki-nam was a veteran of the PTC [Partido dos Trabalhadores da Coreia] and of the revolution and an outstanding political activist who dedicated himself completely to the sacred struggle for the defense and reinforcement of the ideological purity of our revolution and for the firm guarantee of the political victory of the socialist cause”, writes KCNA, citing an obituary published in the name of the party , the Parliament and the Government of North Korea.

According to the North Korean agency, Kim Jong-un “paid tribute” to Kim Ki-nam, visiting the body, “with great regret for the loss of a veteran revolutionary who remained infinitely loyal to the cause of the WPK and who dedicated himself to consolidating the unity of the party and society.”

Retired since 2017, Kim Ki-nam had major responsibilities in the process of concentration and consolidation of authoritarian power in the Kim family. South of the 38th parallel, Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, even spoke of the propagandist as the “North Korean Goebbels”, in reference to Joseph Goebbels, responsible for communications in Nazi Germany.

Born in the late 1920s, into a family of dockworkers who were “going through difficulties”, according to KCNA, Kim “studied abroad”, becoming deputy director of the country’s powerful Propaganda and Agitation Department in 1966, a position he It is currently occupied by Kim Yo-jon, sister of Kim Jong-un, seen by many analysts as one of the main candidates to succeed the current leader.

In the mid-1970s and even before becoming director of that department, in 1985, Kim Ki-nam was appointed editor and responsible for the Rodong Sinmunnewspaper of the PTC central committee, and which this Wednesday made headlines with the death of the propagandist.

It was in fulfilling these functions that Kim Ki-nam became one of the architects of the “divinization” of the Kim Dynasty, conceiving and amplifying the almost mythological narrative around the figure of Kim Il-Sung, founder of the DPRK, presented to the nation as an authentic prophet of the North Korean communist cause and the fight against its capitalist and “imperialist” enemies: South Korea, the United States and Japan.

Kim Ki-nam’s CV also includes an achievement that is unusual for the vast majority of top members of the North Korean state apparatus: he visited neighboring and rival South Korea more than once. In 2009, for example, in one of the few periods in which the obscure and secret regime was open to the outside world, he was part of a North Korean delegation that attended the funeral of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

When Kim Jong-il died in 2011, Kim Ki-nam played a fundamental role in the strategy of presenting his successor to the general public – Kim Jong-un was, until then, a relatively unknown figure, at home and abroad.

Quoted by the BBC, Rachel Lee, researcher at think tank American 38 North Program, attributes great significance to the fact that Kim Jong-un “kept Kim Ki-nam in key propaganda positions” in the country “for years”, which shows that “like his father”, the Supreme Leader always “trusted and counted on him”.

“[Kim Ki-nam] is someone who sought to glorify the Pyongyang regime to attract attention to it within and beyond the Korean peninsula”, says, in turn, Leif-Eric Easley, professor at Ewha University, in Seoul (South Korea), also cited by the British public broadcaster.

For the academic, the death of Kim Ki-nam marks “the end of an era” of North Korean propaganda, especially because, he emphasizes, the current communication strategy is almost entirely focused on obtaining and developing nuclear weapons as a way of reinforce the “political legitimacy” of the regime.