North Korea executes vice-premier for 'disrespect']
THE STAR
Kim Jong-Un
SEOUL: North Korea has executed a vice premier for showing disrespect during a meeting presided over by leader Kim Jong-Un, and banished two other officials for re-education, South Korea said Wednesday.
Since taking power after his father’s death in late 2011, Kim is believed to have executed or demoted a number of senior figures in what analysts say is an attempt to tighten his grip on power.
”Vice premier for education Kim Yong-Jin was executed,” Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said at a regular briefing.
Kim was killed by a firing squad in July as “an anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator,” added an official at the ministry, who declined to be named.
”Kim Yong-Jin was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum” during a session of North Korea’s parliament, and then underwent a interrogation that revealed his other crimes, the official told reporters.
The mass-selling JoongAng Ilbo first reported on Tuesday that top figures had been punished, but identified the education official by a different name.
”He incurred the wrath of Kim after he dozed off during a meeting presided over by Kim. He was arrested on site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry,” it quoted a source as saying.
Kim Jong-Un
SEOUL: North Korea has executed a vice premier for showing disrespect during a meeting presided over by leader Kim Jong-Un, and banished two other officials for re-education, South Korea said Wednesday.
Since taking power after his father’s death in late 2011, Kim is believed to have executed or demoted a number of senior figures in what analysts say is an attempt to tighten his grip on power.
”Vice premier for education Kim Yong-Jin was executed,” Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said at a regular briefing.
Kim was killed by a firing squad in July as “an anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator,” added an official at the ministry, who declined to be named.
”Kim Yong-Jin was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum” during a session of North Korea’s parliament, and then underwent a interrogation that revealed his other crimes, the official told reporters.
The mass-selling JoongAng Ilbo first reported on Tuesday that top figures had been punished, but identified the education official by a different name.
”He incurred the wrath of Kim after he dozed off during a meeting presided over by Kim. He was arrested on site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry,” it quoted a source as saying.
