The Journal. - North Korea’s Propaganda Mastermind

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

For six decades, one man has been largely responsible for creating North Korea’s propaganda machine: Kim Ki Nam. He served all three North Korean dictators and is the architect of many of the myths that have helped to keep the Kim family in power. Last week, Kim Ki Nam died at the age of 94. WSJ’s Timothy Martin reports on his controversial legacy.  Further Reading: -The Original Mastermind Behind North Korea’s Cult-of-Personality Propaganda Dies  -Kim Jong Un’s New Look Is More Man Than Superhuman  Further Listening: -How North Korea’s Hacker Army Stole $3 Billion in Crypto  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

North Korea has been ruled by one family for three quarters of a century, the Kim family. The Kims have maintained power for so long through a combination of brute force and a propaganda machine that's been very, very effective. All of North Korean society is built around fealty for the leader. I mean, they would literally throw their bodies down in front of a speeding train, right, to save the leader. It's beyond religion in a way. That's our colleague Tim Martin, the Wall Street Journal's Korea bureau chief. The mythology around the Kim family is sort of the rocket engine for North Korea. North Korea is an information repressed society.

Things are not good there. People don't have enough food. The economy is struggling. They're hit with sanctions. So the way that the Kim family is able to maintain its grip on power is through this power of persuasion. And throughout the history of the Kim family dynasty, one man has largely been responsible for creating that mythology,

Kim Gi-nam. So his role was, he was the architect for North Korea's vitriolic and mythological propaganda. He spanned the entire history of the country. He served all three Kim leaders. And he's really one of the people who's left the most indelible mark on North Korea as it is today. Last week, at the age of 94, Kim Gi-nam died. During his life, he was one of the most important forces keeping the North Korean dictatorship in power. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Tuesday, May 14th. Coming up on the show, the mastermind behind North Korea's propaganda machine. Attention all soccer fans.

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He was at one of North Korea's big funeral halls. And Kim Jong-un, he's prone to political theatrics, but he looked genuinely sad. And it makes sense because this guy was a close mentor of his and really one of the Kim family's closest confidants over the decades. Since North Korea was founded in 1948, three generations of Kims have ruled the country. Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and now Kim Jong-un. Each Kim has passed the mantle down to his son. And Kim Gi-nam, no relation to the ruling family, has been key to this reign.

So tell us about Kim Gi-nam. Like, where did he come from? He came from a humble background, working class background, and he was born in the Japanese occupation in 1929. So he was a brilliant student. He studied at Kim Il-sung University, named after the country's founder. He was an academic, but then in the 1960s, he started to pivot toward North Korea's state-run media outlets and eventually came to run the country's largest newspaper

and then became head of propaganda. Around the time that Kim Gi-nam took over the Propaganda and Agitation Department, as it's called, the country's first leader, Kim Il-sung, began thinking about succession. He was worried that the country he founded might fall apart if he didn't pick the right successor. The ruling Kim family would have studied the Soviet Union and looked at what happened to

Joseph Stalin, who did not pass the country down to his son, but rather had other close political confidants take over. And Stalin was demonized by his successors. And North Korea wanted to ensure that someone very loyal to Kim Il-sung would be the replacement. But the typical metrics for a successor, say, a military, a sort of exceptional military background, decades of running the country in a more on-the-ground way, Kim Jong-il, the eventual second-generation leader, did not have this. And that's where this guy, Kim Ki-nam, entered the fray. He rewrote history, essentially, and injected a superhero-like backstory to Kim Jong-il. Many historians believe that Kim Jong-il was born in Russia.

But Kim Ki-nam created a story that said he was born in a log cabin in North Korea. In the early 1940s on this sacred mountain called Mount Paektu, and rainbows shot across the sky when he was born. And this was all pushed out in North Korean state media through the newspaper. And this narrative formed around Kim Jong-il that there were messages taken down from the sacred mountain, carved into trees that basically laid out a prophecy that Kim Jong-il should be the next leader. So basically, Kim Gi-nam sort of knew that people were going to ask, like, why should the leader's son be given power? And he invented a reason. Yes. Like, well, why this guy? You know, why is he so special?

And the answer to that, masterminded by this guy Kim Ki-nam, was a sort of deification, you know, superhero powers. It was said that the country's founder, Kim Ryong-sung, could levitate, that he could stop bullets with his hand, that he could turn pine cones into ammunition. This comic book hero stuff emerged that really established nobody but someone with a hereditary tie to the country's founder could run the country. This was not based on political talent, merit. You either had it or you didn't.

And North Koreans were taught in school that to become a leader, you needed this blood connection, which they called the Mount Paektu bloodline. But why would people in North Korea believe this? Yeah, North Korea is basically every piece of media is state-controlled. So there was the newspaper, most public buildings, offices, they're tuned in to the state radio station. They can't really change the channel. This is what's taught in their textbooks at school. Like this is, I mean, it's a dictatorship. This information is pounded into their ears and eyes on a daily basis.

And with enough repetition, do become part of the fabric of reality. In North Korea, there are posters of all three generations of Kim leaders everywhere, on billboards, in offices, schools, people's living rooms. On top of that, most people can't leave the country and don't have access to outside information. And if anyone challenges the state narrative, they could be sent to prison camp, tortured, or even killed. Yeah, and to the extent there might have been skepticism, that would have worked itself out over time, right?

Those people who maybe remembered Kim Jong-sung from the early days and say, well, I don't remember him flying from, you know, the legislative building back to his, you know, royal palace. But for someone who was born into that, who was young and impressionable, that just sort of became the accepted reality over time. This would have really been something people were indoctrinated in from the moment they were in diapers. What your classmates are saying,

what your parents are saying, what your grandparents, maybe with a bit of a skeptical look on their face, are also saying and believing. And that's a very powerful advantage for a regime. How Kim Gi-nam extended that advantage to the current leader, Kim Jong-un, is after the break. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights.

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It wasn't until the late 2000s that the country's second leader, Kim Jong-il, decided which of his children would take control of North Korea when he died. which of his children would take control of North Korea when he died. He chose his youngest son, Kim Jong-un. He was in his mid-20s at the time, baby-faced, with no military or leadership experience, and no public profile. So Kim Gi-nam created a story for him. It was said that Kim Jong-un could drive a car at the age of three, and that he had won a yacht race at the age of nine.

And in the buildup to him actually taking power, state media would refer to him as brilliant comrade. And having a moniker like this put in North Koreans' minds that he was perhaps on the same track as his father and grandfather. Kim Il-sung, the first generation leader, was referred to as the great leader. Kim Jong-sung, the first generation leader, was referred to as the great leader. Kim Jong-il was known as the dear leader. And these types of titles really do matter in a North Korean context. Another way Kim Gi-nam built up Kim Jong-un's profile was to change the way he looked. Kim Gi-nam was masterful at making some distinct stylistic choices for Kim Jong-un. He stylized him after the country's founder, his grandfather, Kim Il-sung. The same slicked back hair.

He wore lots of Mao suits. He held his cigarette in a very similar way as his grandfather. His grandfather was heftier than Kim Jong-un at the time. So he intentionally packed down weight. 10, 20 pounds a year, and eventually hit the scales at 330 pounds. So there was an intentional effort to make him rounder so that he really, in the memories but also photos of his grandfather, they would closely resemble one another physically. resemble one another physically. And this was clearly an attempt to link Kim Jong-un not as a young and perhaps vulnerable leader or something amounting to his father, who was a recluse.

They wanted Kim Jong-un to be seen as sort of a proxy or a direct descendant, a redo, if you will, to the country's founder, Kim Il-sung. Kim Gi-nam's branding of the Kim family has been so effective that even people who escape North Korea have a hard time letting go of the idea that the Kim family is perfect. They know that North Korea is in a sad shape. They know the economy is not good.

They know that it's a corrupt place. It's a dangerous place. But the thing that is hardest for them to reckon with is that Kim Jong-un or his predecessors are evil people, that they're not the greatest humans that have ever graced the earth, that they're not gods. We spoke with one defector who actually couldn't believe that they used the bathroom, that they thought they were such perfect human beings. that they used the bathroom, that they thought they were such perfect human beings.

That's how powerful these stories were. In 2017, when he was in his late 80s, Kim Gi-nam retired. And since then, the messaging around the leader has started to change, as Kim Jong-un has tried to modernize his narrative. There was this dramatic pivot away from portraying him as this superhero figure to a real man who can stand on his own merits. So we started to see a shift away from this comic book stuff to a leader who had vulnerabilities, who was willing to admit that he was human.

There was a point several years ago where Kim Jong-un actually said, we need to stop with the mythology around prior leaders. So he sort of tried to burst that bubble a little bit. He totally wanted to burst the bubble. Kim Jong-un had ordered officials to stop mythicizing his family because he felt like he could no longer hide the truth. Why do you think Kim Jong-un wants to be seen as less godlike now? What happened over the last 15, 20 years was outside media started to flow into North Korea. I mean, you have activists who float balloons over the border

containing thumb drives that have K-dramas, that have Bibles, that have real exposure to the outside world. More North Koreans got phones, especially those living near the border in China, where there's a lot of back and forth between the two countries. So I think Kim Jong-un realized this and knew that he was risking some leadership legitimacy if he tried to keep claiming that he could teleport from point A to point B or literally make it rain on any given day. point at a point B or literally make it rain on any given day. So he tried to ground himself as a more fallible leader. One thing that hasn't changed is that the goal is still to paint Kim Jong-un in a fantastic light.

A few weeks ago, the North Korean government released this music video. The song is called Friendly Father, and it went viral on TikTok. It features clips of Kim Jong-un being swarmed by adoring fans. Beaming young soldiers, factory workers, and schoolchildren sing and dance along. Even though the video was produced years after Kim Gi-nam's retirement, his influence is clear. It's amazing to me that Kim Gi-nam was able to serve for so long in such a brutal regime. I mean, Kim Jong-un had his uncle executed and, according to the U.S., ordered the murder of his half-brother. And yet Kim Ki-nam died of old age and was given a state

funeral. Yeah, Kim Ki-nam served the ruling Workers' Party across six different decades. And I mean, he might be one of, if not the only senior official to have served all three leaders. Because yes, if I put it politely, there was turnover between different leaders. And that to me speaks to how integral he was to ensuring that the Kim family remained in power. And North Korea has existed longer than the Soviet Union did. So if you just go back in time when Kim Jong-un was starting off his propaganda days, it was not for certain that the transfer of power would happen once. And it's happened twice. How long do you think that this propaganda narrative can last for?

Kim Jong-un is a young guy. He's 40, probably got several decades, barring something surprising. I mean, Kim Jong-un has certainly adapted his ability to the times. And yeah, I think the sort of loosening of some of the more fantastical elements of the ruling family sort of ground him in reality. And I think he's making all the moves to make sure that he's still charming the North Korean people, that it's really impossible for them to envision any other scenario. And despite North Korea's many, many problems, the sort of grip that the family has on North Korea is perhaps the most unshakable thing.

That's all for today. Tuesday, May 14th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Dassel Youd. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.