Tag: executions

The threat of regime removal has long been less of a concern for the Kim regime compared to the threat to the regime’s legitimacy from subversive media. The fact they are willing to execute people for watching subversive media is proof of this:

The North Korean government is threatening residents along the border with South Korea with possible execution for being caught watching South Korean media, RFA sources say.
The regime has reportedly held lectures in South Hwanghae province, in the western part of the country, describing severe penalties for the possession of items from wealthy, democratic South Korea.
“In the new year, police officials began hosting lectures all over the province,” said a source from South Hwanghae in an interview with RFA’s Korean Service on Monday.
“The lectures consisted of threats that strictly demand that residents abstain from watching decadent video materials of capitalism and the possessing things like fliers and USB sticks that have found their way in from the South,” said the source.
Activists in South Korea have been known to release balloons laden with money, food, fliers and USB flash drives containing media files, hoping they will land in the North and be found and distributed.  But access to South Korean TV doesn’t always require the discovery of a downed balloon.
“In a recent lecture, they told us they are aware that a growing number of people are able to manipulate the frequencies [of their televisions] to watch South Korean TV programs,” the source said.
“They said that regardless of any individual’s status, those caught in violation could be executed by firing squad. [They want to] instill fear,” the source added.

Radio Free Asia

You can read more at the link.

It has taken 23 years, but the Japanese government has finally executed the Aum Shinrikyo cult leaders responsible for the 1995 sarin gas subway attack in Tokyo and other murders in Japan:

Seven members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult which carried out a deadly chemical attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 have been executed, including cult leader Shoko Asahara.

The Sarin attack, Japan’s worst terror incident, killed 13 people and injured thousands more.

The executions took place at a Tokyo detention house on Friday morning.

Japan does not give prior notice of executions, but they were later confirmed by the justice ministry.

Shoko Asahara, 63, and his followers were also accused of several other murders and an earlier Sarin gas attack in 1994 which killed eight and left 600 injured.  [BBC]

You can read more at the link.

My usual caveats apply when it comes to anonymous sources providing stories like this out of North Korea:

A senior North Korean military officer who told colleagues they no longer needed to “suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets and nuclear weapons” has been executed by firing squad, according to reports in dissident media.

The officer was named by the Seoul-based Daily NK news website as Hyon Ju-song, a 56-year-old lieutenant general who was serving as director of the services inspection division of the People’s Armed Forces.

Lt. Gen. Hyon appears to have become excited at the possibility that the detente that has taken place on the Korean Peninsula this year will develop into full-blown peace and got ahead of official party policy.

Quoting one of the organisation’s “citizen reporters” in the North, Daily NK said Lt. Gen. Hyon had been “on the fast track to success” within the military, but was arrested after making unguarded comments during a visit to one of the regime’s most important facilities.

“While checking the oil supplies for the Sohae Satellite Launching Station during the comprehensive inspections of wartime supplies on April 10, Hyon stated, ‘We no longer have to suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets or nuclear weapons’. This was seen as an abuse of authority and a treasonous statement that opposed the Party’s military-first policy”, the site reported.   [The Telegraph]

You can read more at the link.

Report: North Korea executed six for leaking phone numbers https://t.co/pdbFH0fclJ via @upi

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) April 20, 2018

As with many of these defector accounts it is impossible to know how true the claims really are:

A North Korean defector has told of Kim Jong Un’s teen sex slaves, lavish caviar lunches and gory public executions. Hee Yeon Lim, 26, is the daughter of a high-ranking soldier from Pyongyang and a member of the regime’s inner circle.

But when her father, Col. Wui Yeon Lim, 51, passed away, she and her family decided to flee the country in 2015. Now in South Korea, Hee Yeon has spoken of what life was like inside the secretive rogue state.

She told the Mirror she saw “terrible things” in her home city of Pyongyang despite her family’s relative privilege. She said officials came to her school to pick out teen schoolgirls to work at the chubby dictator’s homes. The escapee said they would only choose the prettiest girls, who were taught to feed him caviar and massage him.

If they refused, they would “disappear,” she said.

Hee Yeon — who has met the despot — also told how he would dine out on imported delicacies like caviar and Chinese “bird’s nest soup,” which can cost $2,700 a kilo (2.2 pounds).

And she described one occasion when she was forced to watch as a group of 11 musicians accused of making a pornographic video were slaughtered. Hee Yeon told how she and her classmates were ordered out of their classrooms in the middle of the day by soldiers who took them to a stadium at the city’s Military Academy.

She said the hooded and gagged victims were brought out and tied to the end of anti-aircraft guns in front of some 10,000 spectators. The escapee then recalled how the guns were fired one by one, saying: “The musicians just disappeared each time the guns were fired into them.  [New York Post]

You can read more at the link.

North Korea 'sentences' four South Korean journalists to death over 'insulting' book reviews: State media https://t.co/DAdww9e3Sh

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) September 1, 2017

There is probably more to this story in regards to why Kim Jong-un would order his execution that has more to do with his bad posture at meetings:

North Korea has carried out the execution of a vice premier and punished two senior officials, a Seoul official said Wednesday, as the North’s leader is seeking to further strengthen his reign of terror.

The official said North Korea executed the 63-year-old Kim Yong-jin by firing squad last month after being branded as an “anti-party and anti-revolutionary element.”

He was investigated by the North’s intelligence agency due to his sitting posture shown at a key parliamentary meeting held in late June.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who took power in late 2011, is believed to have executed more than 100 government and military officials, including his once-powerful uncle Jang Song-thaek, as he seeks to consolidate his oppressive rule.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Being responsible for managing overseas workers looks like a very undesirable job to have in North Korea considering the increasing number of prominent defections happening:

North Korea publicly executed six officials in charge of supervision of its workers overseas in May following the defection of 13 workers at a North Korean-run restaurant in China a month earlier, a local Pyongyang watcher said Friday.

“North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered six officials, including intelligence officials, to be executed publicly on May 5 due to their lack of control over overseas (North Korean) workers,” Choi Seong-yong, chairman of the Abductees’ Family Union, claimed, citing people familiar with the matter.

Eighty public officials and 100 people who have their family members working overseas were forced to watch the execution, he said.

In early April, a group of 12 women and one man fled from a North Korea-run restaurant in China’s eastern port city of Ningbo and defected to South Korea. In the following month, three female workers at a North Korean restaurant in the midwest city of Shanxi reportedly defected to the South.

“North Korea locked the families of the defectors up and forced them to take ideological education at a training facility in Myohyang Mountain, in the northern part of the communist country,” Choi said.  [Yonhap]

The Korea Times has an article that explains how an increasing number of prominent defections are happening:

More and more North Koreans from various social backgrounds are fleeing their country in pursuit of better lives in South Korea, the United States and other countries.

A teenage math prodigy refused to return home and has sought asylum at the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong after participating in the International Mathematics Olympiad there in early July, media outlets there reported Thursday.

Diplomatic sources said Friday that a top military officer and three diplomats fled from North Korea this month and are on their way to third countries via China.

Some other sources claimed a construction worker and two employees at a North Korean restaurant in Malta presumably defected to South Korea after deserting their respective workplaces between 2015 and early this year.

Noting that those defectors are from the middle- and upper-classes, analysts speculated that a growing number of North Koreans regardless of their backgrounds are unhappy with their country’s young leader Kim Jong-un in the wake of sanctions and the country’s accelerated isolation.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it makes me wonder if this is being caused by a combination of the sanctions, disillusionment with the Kim regime and the subversive media entering into North Korea challenging the constant propaganda that North Koreans have to deal with every day.

https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/713721701851406336

Kim Jong-un is either taking a very hardline against corruption or this is just a cover to eliminate people he doesn’t completely trust or may be it is both:

North Korea has executed its army chief of staff, Ri Yong Gil, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, which, if true, would be the latest in a series of executions, purges, and disappearances under the country’s young leader.

The news comes amid heightened tension surrounding the isolated North Korea after its Sunday launch of a long-range rocket, which came about a month after it drew international condemnation for conducting its fourth nuclear test.

A source familiar with North Korean affairs also told Reuters that Ri had been executed. The source declined to be identified, given the sensitivity of the matter.

Ri, who was chief of the Korean People’s Army General Staff, was executed this month for corruption and factional conspiracy, Yonhap and other South Korean media reported.  [Business Insider via reader tip]

You can read more at the link.