New KCNA Director

Yonhap reports that Kim Pyong-ho is the new Director-General of Korean Central News Agency.  Mr. Kim replaces Kim Ki-ryong who had been KCNA’s chief for at least ten years.  Kim Ki-ryong was identified in early January of this year as the editor of Rodong Shinmun.  Kim Pyong-ho has been KCNA’s deputy director-general for at least nine years, and a Vice Chairman of the DPRK Information Committee.  He has lead several North Korean press delegations to media conferences in Russia and China, and participated in meetings with foreign delegations and news agencies in Pyongyang.

SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Yonhap) — Kim Pyong-ho, vice head of North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), has been appointed as the agency’s new chief, a KCNA report confirmed on Monday.

The KCNA, monitored here, called him “general director of the Korean Central News Agency” in a report on a national meeting of North Korean journalists in Pyongyang earlier in the day.

Two notes about Kim Pyong-ho’s appointment at KCNA:

–if Kang Nung-su has become director of the Propaganda and Agiatation Department and may have decided to reshuffle personnel, putting Kim Pyong-ho in the driver’s seat at KCNA and Kim Ki-ryong at Rodong Shinmun;

–The hot propaganda slogan in Pyongyang as of late has been “To the World” which is festooned around Pyongyang on signs and murals; Kim Pyong-ho’s prior involvement in the country’s external relations would seem to make him the ideal personality to advance such an ideological mode.