Top North Korean official executed for ‘not sitting up straight at public event’

A cabinet official has been executed in North Korea because he was not sitting up straight at a public event. Kim Yong-Jin, a vice premier on education affairs, was shot by firing squad in July after being identified an “an anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator”, according to officials in the South. He was first investigated after being caught slouching at an event before other alleged offences came to light, they claimed. Two other top officials were also said to have been banished to rural areas for re-education in the latest purges by the North’s despotic leader Kim Jong-un.

Kim Yong-Jin was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum

South Korean source

Details of executions and other political manoeuvrings in the secretive state are hard to verify. The latest were announced by the South, following reports on Tuesday that Kim had executed two officials using an anti-aircraft gun. Little is known about Kim Yong-Jin, who was last heard of on June 15, when the country’s state media reported he attended an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s taekwondo federation. One of the banished officials was named as Kim Yong Chol, director of the party’s United Front Department. He was said to have punished for his “ovebearing manner”.

north korea