It’s a news agency funded by the US government via the US Agency for Global Media, which is an independent agency of the US government. The Secretary of State used to be on the board of directors by rule but that changed in 2017.
HN is a wild place where there are plenty of credulous Americans who will swear blind that the BBC is propaganda along the same lines as KCNA is in North Korea and Pravda was in the USSR ... while declaring that Radio Free Asia is just an independent news agency.