Kim Jong-un Executing While Intoxicated

Apparently Kim Jong-un’s hangovers include waking to find he had people executed, according to a report in the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun:

The Yomiuri cited a source that claimed Ri Ryong-ha, the first deputy director of the administrative department of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, and Jang Su-gil, a deputy director of the department, were executed because they did not immediately follow an order by Kim to hand over their control of a profitable business to the military.

The newspaper said when Kim made the order, Ri and Jang responded that they first had to report to director Jang – the man in charge of the administrative department – which made the young leader “upset.”

When Kim ordered the execution of the two aides, he was “very drunk,” the source told the Yomiuri.

After they were executed in late November, the leader ordered additional purges of Jang’s aides, the newspaper said.

“Those who were close [to the two aides] were surprised by their execution, and made phone calls to their friends living abroad, and the South Korean government [spy agency] wiretapped their phone conversations,” the newspaper said. “The South Korean government then concluded that the purge of Jang Song-thaek was inevitable, based on the testimony of people involved with the case.”

The Japanese paper said at least eight people from Jang’s circle were executed.

The roundup of people connected to his executed uncle Jang Song-Thaek is said to number in the hundreds. Under North Korea’s guilt by association laws, they face either a prison camp or execution.