NIS: N. Korea executes No. 2 military officer

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is reporting that North Korean Army General Hyon Yong Chol, whose title was Minister of the People’s Armed Forces, has been executed for treason:

Hyon Yong-chol, the chief of North Korea’s People’s Armed Forces, was executed by firing squad using an anti-aircraft gun at a military school in Pyongyang around April 30, the National Intelligence Service said. [Yonhap]

An anti-aircraft gun? Hold that thought. (Update: CNN adds that the execution was carried out at a Pyongyang military school “in front of hundreds of people.”)

Hyon was named as the armed forces chief in June 2014, the No. 2 man within the North’s military after Hwang pyong-so, director of the general political department of the Korean People’s Army (KPA). North Korea has not announced its purge of Hyon yet.

The NIS said that given available information, Hyon seemed to be purged not because he sought a rebellion but because he was “disrespectful” to the young leader.

Specifically, Hyon is said to have been “seen dozing off during a military event” and failed to “carry out Kim’s instructions.” Which could be true, but it certainly would be an extraordinary coincidence that this news emerges just after Kim Jong Un cancelled his visit to Moscow unexpectedly – so unexpectedly that the cancellation was announced hours after the NIS said that Kim was “highly likely” to go through with the trip. The Russians said Kim cancelled because of “internal matters.” So now we know what those were.

Over the past six months, Kim punished other key senior officials including Ma Won-chun, director of the Designing Department at the North’s powerful National Defense Commission.

“As key officials have voiced more complaints, Kim has deepened a reign of terror by purging them in negligence of proper procedure,” the official said. “We believe that there are growing doubts about Kim’s leadership among North Korean ranking officials.”

And he’s just five months from having a longer reign than Caligula, too. Michael Madden, who runs the North Korea Leadership Watch blog, recently told CNN that he saw signs that Kim Jong Un hadn’t yet consolidated power since his succession and the December 2013 purge of Jang Song Thaek. That analysis is looking pretty good at the moment.

You can read Madden’s detailed bio of Hyon Yong-Chol here, but the shorter version is that Hyon had risen steadily through the ranks of the military and the Reconnaissance Bureau through the latter years of Kim Jong Il’s reign, and rose to the very top ranks after Kim Jong Un’s succession. Hyon was one of the main beneficiaries of the 2012 purge of Ri Yong Ho. As recently as last September, when Choe Ryong Hae was reported “recalled” from the post of Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Hyon was made a member of the National Defense Commission “at the proposal of Marshal Kim Jong Un.”

In other words, this isn’t a case of Kim Jong Un cleaning out his dad’s dead wood. Kim Jong Un gave Hyon his seat at the card table in the back room of the pork store, between Paulie and Sal. And it was Kim Jong Un who whacked him.

There are numerous mentions of Hyon in the KCNA archives, including some curious recent ones. As recently as April, Hyon was in Moscow, meeting with a group of Russian officials at a celebration of Kim Il Sung’s birthday.* Hyon left on April 13th and returned on April 20th, leaving plenty of time for plenty of interesting and substantive discussions that we may all speculate about now. If there were plans for Kim to visit Moscow, Hyon was almost certainly there to make the security arrangements.

Hyon had a meeting with Putin himself last November. That meeting and its coverage by KCNA confirm that Hyon was a man of very high stature. The shooting of the very man Putin met so recently would not seem to be a good omen for North Korea’s budding friendship with Russia.

Also interesting: Hyon’s most recent mention on KCNA is an April 29th appearance with the unfortunately transliterated Moranbong Band, the subject of previous (and as it turns out, at least partially unfounded) speculation about a purge and execution. Which reminds us that this could all be bullshit. Could the NIS be wrong? Hey, they were saying that Kim Jong Un was on his way to Moscow, right before he wasn’t. Sure, Kim could have changed his plans at the last minute, and he might have been head-faking his own people.

Yet another coincidence is the death last weekend of Kim Kyok-Sik, said to be a vicious hatchet-man Kim Jong Il* would call up whenever he needed something particularly nasty done, like shelling Yeonpyeong or sinking the Cheonan.

The use of an anti-aircraft gun to execute Hyon would be consistent with this report by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, publishing imagery that Joe Bermudez believes shows an execution using ZPU-4 14.5-millimeter anti-aircraft guns last October. I couldn’t make out much from that imagery myself, but Joe Bermudez isn’t just some crank with a blog and induced astigmatism; he’s a highly respected imagery analyst. This report could help validate his conclusion. Which just goes to show you that in North Korea, some of the ghastly rumors are true.

Thankfully, rumor has it that the AP’s Pyongyang Bureau Chief, Eric Talmadge, is in Pyongyang now. So we can all look forward to a full, detailed report debunking of all this groundless speculation by midday tomorrow.

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* A previous version of this post said “Kim Jong Un.” Since corrected. Thanks to Chris for catching the error. The previous version also said, incorrectly, that Putin was among the Russian officials present at the North Korean Embassy in April.

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Update: Since April 30th, we’ve seen a flurry of missile and rocket tests, and firing drills. I wonder if this activity is a way to keep the officers busy, distracted, tired, and away from their social networks at home. I wonder if it means we’ll soon see a cycle of long-range missile and nuke tests — we’re about due for that anyway — although that didn’t happen after Jang Song-Thaek’s purge.

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Update, 13 May 2015: UPI is reporting that the NIS is backing off of the story, saying that Hyon has definitely been purged, but may not have been executed, or executed in any specific way. Funny thing about that, though – I clicked on my aggregator, scrolled through, and saw that none of the other wires or news services are reporting that.

Wondering why one story contradicts what all the other sources are still reporting, I reached out to a reporter friend who is, in my book, one of the very best and most careful reporters covering North Korea, and one who has a healthy suspicion of the NIS. He doesn’t believe the UPI story is accurate. He says the NIS still says it has multiple sources telling it that Hyon was executed with an anti-aircraft gun. To be sure, the NIS could be wrong, but the majority view doesn’t seem to support the claim that the NIS is backing down.

Now, that being said, South Korean lawmaker Shin Kyoung-Min makes the point that Hyon was seen on North Korean TV after the date of his alleged execution. In the case of Jang Song-Thaek, he was Trotskied out of a TV program before his execution was announced. Make of that what you will.

Within a few days, I suspect the North Koreans will do one of two things – either they’ll print a lengthy denunciation of Hyon, like they did with Jang, or they’ll put him on TV and savor this opportunity to make the NIS look like fools in front of the entire world.

As of the writing of this update, KCNA still hadn’t commented on Hyon, but did threaten to “mercilessly punish those hell-bent on the anti-DPRK ‘human rights’ racket, whether they are the puppet forces or their masters or those going under the mask of any international body.”

North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.