North Korea Executed Top Official, Says Seoul

September 01, 2016

North Korea has executed one of its vice premiers, according to South Korean officials.

Pyongyang also banished two other senior officials, Seoul said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of punishments North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is believed to have ordered

"Vice premier for education Kim Yong-Jin was executed," said Jeong Joon-hee, spokesman for South Korea's unification ministry.

Kim was killed by a firing squad in July as "an anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator", an official at the ministry, who declined to be named, according to the AFP news agency.

"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 an interrogation that revealed other "crimes", the official told reporters.

(Al Jazeera)