North Korea executes vice premier for education

North Korea executed its vice premier for education in July for showing disrespect to leader Kim Jong Un during a meeting in Pyongyang, and banished two other officials to rural areas for re-education, South Korea said on Wednesday.

If confirmed, they would be the latest in a series of killings, purges and dismissals carried out since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011.

Kim Yong Jin, 63, was executed by firing squad last month after he was accused of having a bad attitude during a parliamentary meeting in June, Yonhap reported.

“When the government goes public prematurely with intelligence reports like this, it makes itself vulnerable to North Korea leaking disinformation”, said one intelligence expert.

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”.

Jeong said another senior party official dealing with propaganda affairs, Choe Hwi, was still on a similar “revolutionary re-education” program.

The brutal North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has allegedly killed another senior official, bringing the number of recent high-level executions to three.

The official, who led the country’s reconnaissance bureau, is thought to be behind the sinking of a South Korean warship and shelling of a frontline island in 2010.

Yong-Jin was then sent to be re-educated at a rural farm before he was executed in July for being an “anti-revolutionary agitator”.

The last confirmed execution in the country was of Kim Jong-un’s own uncle, Jang Song-thaek, in December 2013.

The paper says the official was arrested immediately and charged with corruption before Kim ultimately ordered his execution.

North Korea itself very rarely provides confirmation of such reports.

AA guns are heavy-duty high-caliber machine guns that can “pulverise” a human body according to to Greg Scarlatoiu and Joseph Bermudez Jr from the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), quoted in the Washington Post.

A former defence minister, Hyun Yong Chol, is also believed to have been executed past year for treason, according to the South’s spy agency.

Ri Yong-gil was widely reported to have been executed in February but when he made an appearance at North Korea’s party congress it highlighted just how hard it is to get accurate information from the North.