Newspaper: N. Korea executed negotiator over Trump summit
SEOUL, South Korea — A major South Korean newspaper reported Friday that North Korea had executed a top negotiator involved in Kim Jong Un’s failed summit with President Donald Trump in February and punished a key aide.
Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s largest newspaper, cited an unnamed, unspecified source as saying nuclear envoy Kim Hyok Chol was executed by firing squad in March for acting as a U.S. spy. Former military intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol, who hand-delivered a letter from Kim Jong Un to Trump, was sent to a labor camp near the Chinese border on similar charges, the report said.
“Kim Jong Un is believed to have ordered the purge,” the newspaper reported, saying that the moves were intended “to contain internal unrest and mounting public dissatisfaction” after the North Korean leader failed to secure relief from economic sanctions during his second tete-a-tete with Trump in Vietnam.
Government and intelligence officials in South Korea said Friday that they could not confirm the report. A representative of President Moon Jae-in cautioned local journalists not to jump to “rash judgments,” according to media reports.
South Korean media reports of purges and executions inside North Korea, one of the most closed-off societies in the world, have a checkered record of accuracy.
Chosun Ilbo, a conservativeleaning newspaper critical of engagement with the North, reported in 2013 that an ex-girlfriend of Kim Jong Un’s had been executed by firing squad. The woman, singer Hyon Song Wol, visited South Korea last year as part of a delegation attending the Winter Olympics.
South Korea’s main news agency, Yonhap, also reported the execution of a top general in early 2016, relying on South Korean government officials. A few months later, North Korean media reported Ri Yong Gil was not only alive and well but had been named to a number of key posts.
Friday’s report came from Kim Myong-song, a North Korean defector-turned-journalist who reports on South Korea’s unification ministry.
The report also said another official who had also participated in working-level negotiations in the lead-up to the Hanoi summit alongside Kim Hyok Chol and the interpreter who translated for Kim Jong Un had been sent to political prison camps.
Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean defector who previously worked as a reporter for Chosun Ilbo, said that although it would make sense the officials would have fallen out of favor, information from North Korea often gets misinterpreted along the way.