SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Seong-Min, a prominent North Korean defector who used radio broadcasts, USB sticks and a network of sources in the secretive country to inform the North Korean public about the truth of their authoritarian government, has died. He was 63.

The founder of the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio was pronounced dead at a Seoul hospital on Friday, years after fighting a lung cancer which recently spread to his liver, his former colleagues said. They said Kim was cremated and his remains were placed at a columbarium near the border with North Korea,

“We, North Korean defectors, lost one of our leaders. We aren’t sure if we’ll have such a leader again. He was truly our hope,” said Choi Jung-hoon, a defector who worked with Kim for seven years.

Shortwave radio broadcasts

Kim, a former North Korean army captain who arrived in South Korea in 1999, began shortwave radio broadcasts into North Korea — where most of people have no official access to foreign news — in 2005. It was the first such South Korean civilian radio station run by a defector.

His station’s news has included everything from success stories of North Korean defectors in South Korea and the purported luxurious life styles of the North’s ruling Kim family to political news in South Korea, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Before the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Kim told The Associated Press that his station recorded a special program explaining a U.S. election system and comparing it with a North Korean system, where a sole candidate wins nearly 100% of the votes cast at each district in parliamentary elections.

“We also explained that in South Korea it’s hard for one candidate to win more than 50% of votes cast, as there are diverse opinions. (In the U.S.), challengers often compete against an incumbent president, and we stressed that’s something that couldn’t happen in North Korea,” Kim said.