Having the ability to fire a missile from a submarine could help North Korea evade a new anti-missile system planned for South Korea and pose a threat even if nuclear-armed North Korea’s land-based arsenal was destroyed, experts said.
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South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee confirmed the execution during a press conference early on Wednesday, held to address media reports of a public execution of a senior-level North Korean official. Jeong gave no further details, including why and when his ministry believes he was executed and how it obtained the information.
North Korea is barred under United Nations resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology, but has carried out several launches following its fourth nuclear test in January.
North Korea has also been cracking down on its emerging class of wealthy merchants, South Korean news service Daily NK reported.
“He was arrested on site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry”.
“He was executed after other charges, such as corruption, were found during the probe”. Former Agriculture Minister Hwang Min was purged over a proposed project seen as a direct challenge to Kim’s leadership, it said.
The vice premier was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum during a session of North Korea’s parliament.
Kim Yong Chol was banished at a rural farm for about one month between mid-July and mid-August because of alleged high-handed attitudes and attempts to expand his United Front Department’s authority too much, according to the South Korean official who spoke about Kim Yong Jin’s execution.
The official said before the execution, Yong-Jin first faced an investigation because of the way he was seated during a June meeting attended by the Leader Kim Jong Un. “It shows that Kim Jong Un believes extreme measures are effective in dealing with his people and making them loyal to him”. “And Choe Hwi, a vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers’ Party, is now undergoing such re-education”.
Tokola also said that China’s opposition to THAAD also reveals that it has “difficulty crediting the idea that there can be developments within Northeast Asia that are not really about China, i.e. that South Korea might have a specific interest in defending itself against a belligerent North Korea”.
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Kim Yong Chol and Choe Hwi escaped execution; however, they both received “revolutionary punishments” and were sent to the country for re-education training through hard labor. Yonhap said he was recently reinstated.
