SEOUL, South Korea, Agence France-Presse – AUG. 31, 2016 — The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has executed his deputy premier for education and purged two other senior officials, sending them to re-education camps, the South Korean government said on Wednesday.

Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry

Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry, said at a news briefing that the government had used various means to confirm the execution of Kim Yong-jin, the deputy premier, and the purge of Kim Yong-chol, the head of the United Front Department of the ruling Workers’ Party, which handles relations with, as well as spying operations against, South Korea. Choe Hui-do, a deputy chief of the party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, was also banished for re-education, Mr. Jeong said.

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, in a picture issued by his government’s Korean

Mr. Jeong provided no further details, including when the reported punishments were believed to have taken place or how South Korea had learned of them.

 
Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry, at a news conference this month. He said that the government had used various means to confirm the execution of the deputy premier of education.
Mr. Kim, the deputy premier, would be the highest-ranking official known to have been executed since 2013, whenNorth Korea confirmed in a rare announcement that Kim Jong-un had executed his own uncle and No. 2 official, Jang Song-thaek, on charges of factionalism, corruption and plotting to overthrow his government.
The South Korean national news agency, Yonhap, citing an anonymous government source, reported that the deputy premier had been arrested for sitting in a “disrespectful” posture during a meeting led by Kim Jong-un. He was executed by firing squad in July, the agency said. Yonhap also reported that Kim Yong-chol, the United Front Department head, had spent a month in a re-education camp for abuse of power and that he had been released in mid-August.
Since taking power in 2011, Kim Jong-un has frequently reshuffled the party and military elites as he has consolidated his authority in North Korea, which his family has ruled for seven decades. Mr. Kim has also executed dozens of top officials in what President Park Geun-hye of South Korea has called a “reign of terror,” according to South Korean intelligence officials.
It remains difficult to independently verify reports of executions and purgesin the secretive North. North Korea rarely announces them.