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 2014, Ri Jae-il was the first deputy director in the Propaganda and Agitation Department in the Central Committee, which was 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 28 September 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
232-person funeral committee. This testified to the formal and actual belonging of Ri Jae il 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. ==References==