Kim Jong Un purges the army

In North Korea, it’s 1937 all over again:

The North Korean military has refrained from conducting “joint exercises” due partly to poor fuel supplies, but mainly because “an effort to replace those linked to Jang Song Thaek in the military is ongoing,” according to sources from the country’s military officer corps.  “Joint exercises during the winter this year were not even planned,” a military source in northern Yanggang province told RFA’s Korean Service. “The brakes have likely been put on such exercises because of large-scale replacements in the officer corps.” [….]

The military source also said that officers at each military base with a rank lower than regiment commander and higher than battalion commander had been replaced in an apparent bid to weed out any of Jang’s links. New procedures have also been introduced to boost promotion prospects for younger officers in a move believed aimed at filling up positions as the military copes with the purge of those linked to Jang. [Radio Free Asia] 

The reports here aren’t completely consistent, but can be harmonized. The Daily NK reports that winter training exercises are ongoing, but they’re mostly long ruck marches in the cold, not mechanized exercises. Interestingly, Yonhap is also reporting that civilian fuel supplies have also been cut. I wouldn’t be too quick to assume that this is the result of shortages. It may well be that the regime is taking steps to prevent large movements of people and equipment.

Separately, the Daily NK is reporting more wide-scale purges and executions in army units across North Korea.

The source revealed in particular the case of “Unit 570,” which has undergone “Urakkai,” a Japanese word used in North Korea to mean complete and absolute change. The unit commander has been executed and all enlisted men either punished or transferred to other units, it is alleged. [Daily NK]

Apparently, the unit leader was associated with Jang. Its mission is “guerrilla warfare,” and its funding comes from cross-border business operations, suggesting that it’s a part of North Korea’s vaunted Special Forces:

“It’s not clear where the unit has gone, but it is now comprised of new soldiers from elsewhere. Not a lot is known about what happened,” he added. “The regime is no longer summoning Jang’s former accomplices to Pyongyang and punishing them there, preferring to quietly carry out its executions in the countryside.” 

“According to news trickling out of the unit, all senior officers were called in separately and harshly questioned during a mass rally that took place in Pyongyang late last year. They were taken into custody after the rally finished,” the source went on.

While the source said that other units are also under close scrutiny and face punishment following the Jang execution, Unit 570, which is based in Maengsan in northeast South Pyongan Province, is special in that it is a special operations force tasked with preparing for guerrilla warfare on the streets of Seoul in the event of a second Korean War.  For this reason, the unit receives more tools and equipment than many others.  

Remember this the next time someone tells you that the regime’s trade with China is necessarily an engine of reform. The whole argument is based on the flawed premise that the regime is Socialist, Communist, or otherwise philosophically opposed to making money.

The report notes that the V and VIII Corps are also being purged. The VIII Corps is responsible for defending a long stretch of the border between North Korea and China, and the V Corps is a front-line unit, posted along the DMZ. All of these are elite units that should have the best equipment, training, and morale. They are not the glorified construction companies whose soldiers so often go hungry.

Executing and “disappearing” officers from these elite sounds awfully dangerous. Stalin managed it, but Kim Jong Un isn’t Stalin, and even Stalin paid the price for his 1937 purge in 1940, when his army proved too inept and poorly led to defeat the Finns, thus encouraging Hitler to invade the U.S.S.R. a year later.

Meanwhile, the purge of civilian cadres also continues.

The official said that even employees from North Korean restaurants in China and other countries run by the administrative division of the Korean Workers’ Party, which Jang headed, were “investigated for at least a week before being released.” These purging efforts are expected to last until June, he said. Key figures around Jang, excluding his wife, are apparently being investigated and categorized across four levels. [Joongang Ilbo]

Some of those who remain in Pyongyang are supposedly so terrified that they’re flocking to fortune tellers. The Joongang Ilbo report also speculates that, contra reports that Jang’s relatives have been executed (Item 2), they may well have been sent to the camps. I don’t know the answer to that specific question, but I’ll have a bit more to say about that point later this week, and about how you can get involved in hunting for the evidence of it.