NORTH KOREA: North Korea Appoints New Army Boss After Executing Another General

Murdered General Encircled

There is a new general in charge of North Korea's army, the country's state media has confirmed, as rumours swirl that his predecessor was executed. Ri Myong-su is the pariah state's new military chief of staff, according to the Korean Central News Agency. He replaces the out-of-favour Ri Yong-gil, who, unconfirmed reports in the South Korean media suggest, is now dead.

Formerly holding the title of "people's security minister", Ri Myong-su was recently referred to as "chief of the Korean people's army general staff" in a KCNA report on an army exercise.

According to a source quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, Ri Yong-gil was executed after being accused of corruption and of forming a political faction. He is the third chief of staff to be executed by North Korean premier Kim Jong-un since he took power after his father's death in 2011.

Kim's reign has been blighted by repeated purges of senior staff, most notably the execution of his influential uncle Jang Song-thaek in 2013. Many officials were removed in the months and years following Kim's elevation to North Korea's supreme leader in 2012, in what analysts believe are attempts to shore up an uncertain power base.

In May 2015 South Korea's parliament heard that the North's defence minister Hyon Yong-chol had been executed for showing "disloyalty" to Kim. Hyon is said to have been executed with an anti-aircraft gun in front of an audience, though this report was never confirmed.

Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said that the new military chief is "one of Mr Kim's top three aides" and is "known to be well-versed in missile technology".

Kim's North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test last month and this month it also tested a long-range rocket, to a chorus of international outrage.

There’s a general presumption in geopolitics that most national governments are, by and large, rational actors. They might be sinister and ruthless, and they’ve all got their little quirks, but for the most part they’re sane.

And then you’ve got Kim Jong-Un, the gibbering lunatic who runs North Korea. He’s the third generation of psychotic “leadership” that tortured country has endured. He’s turning out to be a clever little demon.

Kim Jong-Un has been purging the North Korean military of officers he perceives as a threat. His latest victim was Kim Chol, vice-minister of the army. The minister was arrested for being insufficiently glum during the officially mandated mourning period for North Korea’s previous dictator, Kim Jong-Il. Allegedly, he was “drinking and carousing” during the mandatory days of sorrow. (For most North Koreans, “drinking and carousing” means finding water that isn’t contaminated with bacteria, but the military lives much better than the peons.)

This show of disrespect for the previous Dear Leader left Kim Jong-Un so distraught that he ordered the vice-minister not only executed, but erased. “Leave no trace of him behind, down to his hair,” the executioners were told.

So they ranged in a mortar on a particular spot, forced Kim Chol to stand there, and then lobbed a mortar round into his lap, blowing him to smithereens.