North Korea leader executes official for dozing during meeting

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has allegedly executed two top officials for disobeying him. The JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reports that former agriculture minister Hwang Min and Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the education ministry, were executed using anti-aircraft guns.

A source suggested that Ri Yong Jin was executed after he ‘dozed off during a meeting presided over by Kim’. ‘He was arrested on site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry. He was executed after other charges, such as corruption, were found during the probe.’ ‘I understand he was executed because policy proposals he had pushed for were seen as a direct challenge to the Kim Jong-Un leadership,’ the source added.

 It is believed they were executed earlier this month, and is the latest in a series of high-level purges under the young leader’s rule. Tthe executions were reportedly carried out at a military academy in the capital, Pyongyang, are part of a “new reign of terror” sparked by “a series of defections by senior officials that has rekindled talk of instability and disunity among the North Korea elite”.

Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the education ministry, is believed to have been executed 

Kim took power in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, and his consolidation of power has included purges and executions of top officials, South Korean officials have said. Hyun Yong Chol, a former defence minister, was executed last year for treason, according to the South’s spy agency. North Korean state media described Hwang, one of the officials named, as agriculture minister in 2012, and referred to him as a vice minister of agriculture in 2014.