North Korea has executed a vice premier and banished two other top officials to rural areas for re-education, South Korean officials said Wednesday.
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Kim Yong-jin, North Korea’s vice premier for education and Hwang Min, a former bureaucrat in the agriculture ministry, were allegedly gunned down in July under dictator Kim’s tyrannical regime.
It said some previous reports of executions and purges in the reclusive state have proven inaccurate.
Unnamed sources told the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Daily that the official “incurred the wrath of Kim after he dozed off during a meeting that Kim presided over”. The letters read ” North Korea has executed Kim Yong Jin and banished Kim Yong Chol and Choe Hwi.
It was first reported by a South Korean news agency, Yonhap who reported that the deputy premier had been arrested for sitting in a “disrespectful” posture during a North Korean Parliament meeting.
The ministry’s announcement Wednesday came as a correction to a report by the JoongAng Ilbo on Tuesday on executions of two top officials in Pyongyang, citing a North Korea source.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday the defections signal a “serious fracture” within the North Korean regime and raise the prospects of fresh provocations as Kim seeks to maintain control. Education minister Kim Yong-Jin, 63, was shot dead after this.
In May, however, he reportedly reappeared on a list of attendees of a Workers’ Party of Korea congress.
Kim Yong-Chol, another senior official in the North Korean government, was recently sent to an “ideological re-education” camp as punishment for his “overbearing attitude”. Kim Yong-Chol’s re-education is evidently complete, as he is back on duty, and the South Koreans are anxious he’ll be tempted to prove himself to the dictatorship by “committing provocative acts”.
Who are Kim Yong-jin and Kim Yong-chol?
The rival Koreas have shared the world’s most heavily fortified border since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, and they bar ordinary citizens from exchanging phone calls, letters and emails without special permission.
It is also believed that former defence minister Hyun Yong Chol was executed past year for treason, according to the South’s spy agency.
In late 2013, Kim Jong Un executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, who was accused of building a power base opposed to the leadership, among other crimes.
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Still, reports of purges of senior North Korean officials are not uncommon and at times have proven to be unreliable.
