Ri Jae-il

Ri Jae-il
First Deputy Director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department
In office May 2004 – November 2014
Supreme Leader	Kim Jong-un Kim Jong-il
Succeeded by	Kim Yo-jong
Personal details
Born	1935 (age 88–89) Japanese controlled Korea
Political party	Workers' Party of Korea

Ri Jae-il (Korean: 리재일, born 1935) is a North Korean politician and a member of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party of Korea as well as member of the Supreme People's Assembly.

Biography

Ri Jae Il was born in 1935. He started his professional career as a journalist, he was the editor of the capital's daily Pyongyang Sinmun. Little is known about his civil and political career before 1992, when he became deputy director of one of the departments of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea. In February 2001, he became chairman of the State Publishing Control Committee, the main office dealing with political censorship in North Korea's mass media. From May 2004 to the present, Ri Jae-il is the first deputy director in the Propaganda and Agitation Department in the Central Committee, which is currently managed by Ri Il-hwan.

He was a member of the 12th convocation of the Supreme People's Assembly, the unicameral parliament of North Korea. Pursuant to the provisions of the 3rd Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea, on September 28, 2010, Ri Jae-il became a deputy member of the Central Committee. After the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011, Ri Jae-il was 120th in the 233-person funeral committee. This testified to the formal and actual belonging of Ri Jae Ila to the political leadership of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. According to specialists, places on such lists defined the rank of a politician in the hierarchy of the power apparatus.