North Korea executes vice premier, Seoul says

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korea has executed a vice premier and banished two other top officials to rural areas for re-education, South Korean officials said Wednesday, August 31, the Associated Press reports.

If confirmed, they would be the latest in a series of killings, purges and dismissals carried out since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011.

Jeong Joon Hee, a spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, told reporters Wednesday that Kim Yong Jin, a vice premier in North Korea's cabinet, had been executed.

Jeong said Kim was in charge of education affairs, but refused to disclose why and when South Korea believes he was executed. He also didn't explain how his ministry obtained the information.

Little is known about Kim Yong Jin, who was last mentioned by North Korea's state news agency on June 15, when it reported he attended an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's taekwondo federation, AP says.

Jeong said Kim Yong Chol, a top ruling Workers' Party official in charge of anti-Seoul spy operations, had also been ordered to undertake "revolutionary reeducation," in a reference to the banishment at a rural collective farm or a coal mine. Jeong said another senior party official dealing with propaganda affairs, Choe Hwi, was still on a similar "revolutionary re-education" program.