North Korea’s former propaganda chief, credited with masterminding the personality cult surrounding the ruling Kim dynasty, has died at the age of 94, state media said yesterday, with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un photographed bowing at his funeral bier.
Kim Ki-nam died on Tuesday due to old age and “multiple organ dysfunction,” having been treated at hospital since 2022, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Kim Jong-un visited the funeral hall early yesterday morning, paid silent tribute and looked around the bier with “bitter grief over the loss of a veteran revolutionary who had remained boundlessly loyal” to the regime, KCNA said.
Photo: AP
Kim Ki-nam is best known for having led North Korea’s key department for propaganda.
In the 1970s, he was in charge of Pyongyang’s official mouthpiece, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, according to the North.
He is credited with masterminding the cult of the Kim family dynasty, and Pyongyang’s state media yesterday described him as “a veteran of our Party and the revolution, a prestigious theoretician and a prominent political activist.”
The Kim dynasty, established by founding North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, has ruled the nation with an iron fist and pervasive personality cult over three generations.
Kim Ki-nam “is the North Korean equivalent of Paul Joseph Goebbels,” said Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies.
“It is safe to say that the propaganda and agitation strategies of the Kim dynasty all came from Kim Ki-nam’s mind,” Ahn said.
Kim Ki-nam’s role as the regime’s chief propagandist was passed on to Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, in the late 2010s.
In 2005, Kim Ki-nam led a North Korean delegation to visit South Korea’s National Cemetery, honoring soldiers who died during the Korean War.
In 2009, he led a delegation to the South to attend the funeral of former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and met with then-South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.
Inter-Korean relations are at one of their lowest points in years.
It is regrettable that Pyongyang has made no mention of Kim Ki-nam’s efforts for inter-Korean cooperation following his death, said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“It seems to show the current state of inter-Korean relations characterized by confrontation and conflict,” he said.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant