Dr. Roh Kil Nam, the founder of the Los Angeles-based, pro-Pyongyang news service Minjok Tongshin, died on Saturday, aged 76.

His death – which followed COVID 19-like symptoms and a visit to an intensive care unit – was confirmed in a Korean-language update posted on the website on which he had worked since November 1999.

Best known for an exclusive 2016 interview with the two sons of American defector to North Korea James Dresnok, Minjok Tongshin has long served as the primary pro-DPRK news and features portal in the United States.

As a result, his Minjok Tongshin (which roughly translates to “People’s News”) website has been cited hundreds of times by official DPRK state media, so much so that until recently South Korean authorities even blocked access to it.

Due to his long-standing support for Pyongyang, Roh was a regular visitor to North Korea, having been there over 70 times for high-level press events, anniversaries, delegation tours, and more.

NK News met and interviewed Roh during a chance encounter in Kim Il Sung square in April 2017.

But because of his coverage and strident views, Roh was a controversial figure to many working on Korea issues in North America, described by Buzzfeed in 2016 as “North Korea’s Number One Fan in the United States”.

Josh Stanton, who runs the One Free Korea blog, was also critical of Roh, describing his outlet as “Stormfront for pro-Pyongyang Koreans” for the anti-semitic content frequently featured on the site.

But Roh defended his coverage in his interview with NK News back in 2017.

“Many people say we are “pro-DPRK”, but we don’t think so,” he said. “We love South Korea, we love North Korea: brothers and sisters, same thing you know?”

Because the Korean peninsula was “divided by superpowers, such as the United States, for now over 70 years,” he said “we, at Minjok Tonshin, are playing a big role in promoting reunification.”

Born in 1944 on the east coast of South Korea, Roh studied at Seoul’s prestigious Yonsei University and worked there as the editor-in-chief of the campus English language newspaper, he told Buzzfeed during the 2016 interview.

But unhappy with dictatorship under Park Chung-hee, he moved to the U.S. in 1973, which at the time seemed to be the “number one democratic country, number one social justice–oriented country.”

However, after time at the University of Texas, Roh quickly changed his mind.

“I started to know what is jingoism, what is the civil rights movement in the U.S.A.,” he told Buzzfeed. “I didn’t know before I came here. I started to open my consciousness [and] become critical.”

Unhappy with American society, Roh first visited the North in 1990 after a series of high-profile visits there by South Korean activists the year prior.

He participated in a “pan-national rally for unification” near Panmunjom, after which he was unexpectedly taken with 14 fellow participants to a private villa.

And there they would meet Kim Il Sung, having being chosen to share a meal with the founding President of the DPRK.

“I was scared,” Roh told Buzzfeed, “but he made us very comfortable”. The encounter, he continued, made Kim Il Sung feel to Roh like “a grandfather.”

After returning to the U.S. and studying Kim Il Sung’s published works, Roh decided in 1998 to set up an online publication in order to better promote reunification-related issues in the United States.

The result was launched in 1999 as Minjok Tongshin, intended as a resource for Korean speakers across the nation with an interest in DPRK angled-peace and unification related information.

He told NK News in 2017 that the site was primarily funded by donations, from “sponsors” located in “Western cities in the United States”.

“It’s historical journalism, you know?”

In recognition of his work in support of the DPRK, Roh received a Ph.D. in political science from Kim Il Sung University in 2008, Buzzfeed said in its 2016 profile on his work.

Two regular visitors to North Korea shared their recollections of him with NK News.

“I mentioned his name in North Korea and everyone I knew was familiar with him” said Aram Pan, a Singaporean photographer who met Roh twice during photo assignments in North Korea. “He was well liked in the DPRK.”

Shin Eunmi, a Korean-American who has regularly visited both North and South Korea – who is currently banned from both countries – said she respected his “enthusiasm and fervor in reunification of Korea”.

Edited by Oliver Hotham