Two top leaders of North Korea were reported to have been publicly executed with anti-aircraft guns in August 2016 on orders of the country's leader, Kim Jong-un. The two leaders, former agricultural minister Hwang Min and a senior member of the education ministry, Ri Yong-jin, were executed in a military academy in Pyongyang, South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo reported on Tuesday.
"One of the executed is Hwang Min, a former agricultural minister," said the source. "I understand he was executed because policy proposals he had pushed for were seen as a direct challenge to the Kim Jong-un leadership." Ri Yong-jin was executed for nodding off during a meeting with Kim Jong-un. He was also "intensely questioned" and charged with corruption before being executed.
This is the first time Kim Jong-un ordered the execution of people who don't belong to his Worker's Party or the military. The reports of the executions follow multiple incidents of officials defecting from the country.
Recently, Thae Yong-ho, who was considered No. 2 at the North Korean embassy in London, defected, fuelling rumours that there is no unity in the Worker's Party.
The recent series of defections by top officials is less a looming sign of the collapse of the North Korean regime than the outcome of the North's wrong policies for its overseas officials," Kim Byung-yeon, professor of economics at Seoul National University and a specialist on the North Korean economy, was quoted as saying by JoongAng Ilbo.
Kim is continuing to replace the old guard of his father's regime with loyalists," Robert Kelly, a political science professor at South Korea's Pusan National University, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. "The charges are obviously trumped up, and this is how promotion or demotion often works in totalitarian states without legitimate venues for opposition."
The leader of the isolated nuclear-armed country has ordered multiple high-level executions, cleansing the top rung of people who were loyal to his father, former supreme leader Kim Jong-il. In 2013, he had his uncle and former political guardian, Jang Song-thaek, executed. In April 2015, he directed the execution of North Korea's former defence chief, Hyon Yong-chol. He too was killed for sleeping off during a meeting attended by the supreme leader.
