The Kyunghyang Shinmun, quoting a South Korean source who deals with the North, reports that Choe Sung-chol — who used to be the vice-director of the Workers Party of Korea body that handled inter-Korean projects — has been executed.
The source said the stated reason for his execution was personal corruption in the course of inter-Korean exchanges, he was really executed for misjudging the North Korea policy of the Lee Myung-bak administration and the effect the Sunshine Policy would have on North Korea policy.
Choe had been a major figure in inter-Korean cooperation during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. His execution — at least according to the Kyunghyang — would signify that North Korea’s military leadership and other hardliners, who never liked inter-Korean negotiations, have used the deterioration of inter-Korean ties since the launch of the Lee administration to begin eliminating the faction within North Korea calling for talks.
A South Korean Unification Ministry official said that while rumors that Choe and other North Korean handlers of inter-Korean projects were purged have been going around since last year, they’ve yet to confirm he’s been executed.
A post earlier this year at North Korean Economy Watch, meanwhile, suggested that Choe had been sent to a chicken farm after he was sacked.
Marmot’s Note: To put a positive spin on this, if he was executed, and the source’s explanation for it is true, perhaps the Sunshine Policy hasn’t been a colossal waste of money after all. Anything that gets Pyongyang so jittery that they’re executing high-ranking officials has to be a good thing, right?
UPDATE: English story in the Korea Times here.
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Either they are feeling the heat and/or the military government is using this as a pretext to purge dissent. After all, it’s not as if 2MB can be elected president twice. There’s simply no way of knowing if the next South Korean presidents will take a similar stance on interpeninsular exchanges.
Why don’t they just say he suffered an unfortunate brain hemorrhage… of the 9mm variety… due to, uh… “stress.”
WK,
It’s all for show.
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