Report: N. Korean minister executed for disloyalty to Kim
North Korea's Defense Minister Hyon Yong-chol has apparently been executed, possibly by antiaircraft fire, for disloyalty to the country's leader Kim Jong-un, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday.
The state-run news service cited South Korea's spy agency — the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Information related to North Korea, a highly secretive country ostracized by the West for its nuclear weapons ambitions and erratic political behavior, is extremely difficult to independently confirm.
The NIS said the immediate cause of Hyon's killing was that the chief of the North Korea's People's Armed Forces, 66, may have been attempting to start a rebellion against North Korea's reclusive young leader.
The NIS didn't specify how it obtained the information. Kim is thought to have been behind a number of high-profile purges of top North Korean officials in recent times, including, notably, his uncle Jang Song Thaek, killed in 2013 for alleged treason.
Yonhap reported Hyon was seen dozing off during a recent military event presided over by Kim and that Hyon had on several occasions challenged the young ruler's authority. Kim is around 32 years of age, although that too has not been verified.
The NIS's claim that Hyon was executed by firing squad using an antiaircraft gun in front of hundreds of people at a military school in the North Korean capital Pyongyang — likely around April 30 — would be consistent with other reports of exceptionally brutal executions ordered by Kim.
South Korea's government has previously said that dozens of North Korean officials have been executed, many by machine gun.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, told the Associated Press that Kim appears to be using purges to keep the military old guard in check because they pose the only plausible threat to his rule.