North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends the funeral for Kim Ki-nam, the North's former propaganda chief and secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party, May, 9. Yonhap

North Korea has held a state funeral for Kim Ki-nam, known as the master of propaganda operations for the North's ruling family, with leader Kim Jong-un in attendance, state media said Friday.

The former secretary of the Central Committee of the North's ruling Workers' Party died at the age of 94 on Tuesday due to age-related illness and multiple organ failure, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Kim Jong-un, who led the state funeral committee for the late official, attended the funeral held in Pyongyang on Thursday and accompanied the bereaved family members to a burial at the Patriotic Martyrs Cemetery, the KCNA said.

"He said that thanks to the veterans of the revolution like Kim Ki-nam who made a positive contribution to consolidating the cornerstone for the existence and development of our Party and state and ... the revolutionary cause of Juche could be dynamically advanced despite the tempest of history," it added.

Kim Ki-nam, who spent decades overseeing propaganda operations in North Korea, was dubbed the "North Korean Goebbels" after Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Paul Joseph Goebbels.

The late official was known to have stepped down from most official posts after he was excluded from a group of top officials sitting on the podium together with the leader Kim in a party plenary meeting in October 2017.

In 2009, he visited South Korea while leading a North Korean delegation to pay condolences to late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The late president held the first inter-Korean summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the late father of the current North Korean leader, in 2000. (Yonhap)

（作者：新闻中心）