According to "court poet" and now defector Jang Jin-sung, prior to 1994, when Supreme Leader Kim Il-sung was alive, the art of the novel was preeminent. Nearly all the top state honors such as the Kim Il-sung Medal, the Order of Heroic Effort, and the title of Kim Il-sung Associate were awarded to the state's novelists. The novel's length was a perfect medium to expound on the great deeds of Kim Il-sung, who was himself both an avid reader and writer of novels. After his death in 1994, the novel was replaced by poetry, which was largely due to the country's economic problems which made paper very expensive and poetry about the deeds of Dear Leader could be reproduced easily in a single newspaper page. Shorter poetry was most common, while the longer epic genre was restricted to just six poets, who were also the poets laureate of North Korea. Epic poetry (and film) became the chief vehicle of political propaganda under Kim Jong-il.