Here’s a story that will make you sit up straight: North Korea reportedly executed its vice premier for education, Kim Yong-Jin, by firing squad after he slumped over in a meeting with Kim Jong-Un. This story comes from Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman, who said, “Kim Yong-Jin was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum.”
According to Foreign Policy, Kim Yong-Jin’s “audacity to either fall asleep or have such bad posture that others thought he did during a meeting run by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un earned him the pleasure of an interrogation by government officials.” After that meeting, he was deemed an “anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator,” and sentenced to death.
Two other top North Korean officials were also disciplined in the past few months, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry, though both of them evaded execution. The head of North Korea’s United Front Department, Kim Yong Chol, reportedly received “revolutionary punishment” at a farm, and a senior official at the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Worker’s Party, Choe Hwi, has likewise been enduring “revolutionary re-education” at a rural labor camp since May.
As CNN reports, “executions are widely considered a political tool for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to consolidate his hold on power.” In May 2015, North Korea’s defense minister, Hyon Yong-chol, was assassinated by airstrike after being accused of treason. In 2013, Kim Jong-Un’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, was executed and called a “traitor for all ages.”
(Via The Hill, CNN & Foreign Policy)