SEOUL, South Korea - The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has executed his deputy premier for education and purged two other senior officials, sending them to re-education camps, the South Korean government said on Wednesday.
Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the South's Unification Ministry, said at a news briefing that the South Korean government had used various means to confirm the execution of Kim Yong-jin, the deputy premier, and the purge of Kim Yong-chol, the head of the United Front Department of the ruling Workers' Party, which handles relations with, as well as spying operations against, South Korea. Choe Hui, a deputy chief of the party's Propaganda and Agitation Department, was also banished for re-education, Mr. Jeong said.
Mr. Jeong provided no further details, including when the reported punishments were believed to have taken place or how South Korea had learned of them. But in a later briefing, a senior Unification Ministry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said that Kim Jong-un had found fault with the 63-year-old deputy premier's "disrespectful posture" during a meeting that Mr. Kim oversaw in late June.
A subsequent investigation found the deputy premier to be an "anti-party reactionary" guilty of "modern-day factionalism," and he was executed by firing squad in July, the official said.
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