The 'North Korean Goebbels' Dies at 94

Kim Ki Nam, a North Korean propaganda chief who helped build personality cults around the country's three dynastic leaders, has died at 94, the North's state media said. North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said the country's current leader, Kim Jong Un, visited the body of Kim Ki Nam at a funeral hall in the capital, Pyongyang, early Wednesday and expressed condolences to family members. The agency said Kim Jong Un will lead the state funeral committee for Kim Ki Nam, who will be buried on Thursday, the AP reports.

KCNA said Kim Ki Nam, a former secretary of the ruling Workers' Party's central committee, "devoted his all to the sacred struggle for defending and strengthening the ideological purity of our revolution and firmly guaranteeing the steady victory of the socialist cause." The agency said he died Tuesday after being treated for age-related illnesses and multiple organ dysfunctions for the past year. Kim Ki Nam's role as the country's chief propagandist earned him notoriety in South Korea, where media nicknamed him the "North Korean Goebbels," after Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. He was one of the seven senior officials who joined Kim Jong Un in accompanying the hearse of the late leader (and Kim Jong Un's father) Kim Jong Il following his death in 2011.

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