North Korea executed its former top nuclear envoy to the US and four other foreign ministry officials in March after a failed summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo reported.
Kim Hyok-chol, who led working-level negotiations for the February summit in Hanoi, was executed by firing squad after being charged with espionage after allegedly being co-opted by the US, the newspaper said yesterday, citing an unidentified source.
The move was part of an internal purge Kim Jong-un undertook after the summit broke down without any deal, it said.
Speculation has swirled for months about the fate of Kim Hyok-chol, who has not received any recent mentions in state media dispatches.
Previous South Korean media reports about senior North Korean officials being executed following the talks have proven false.
Kim Jong-un’s top aide, Kim Yong-chol, who was also involved in the summit, is reportedly undergoing hard labor, according to the Chosun Ilbo report.
South Korea’s presidential Blue House would not confirm the report, and advised media not to jump to conclusions.
“We think that hasty judgement or commenting on this situation is not appropriate,” it said.
Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters in Singapore that he could not confirm Kim Hyok-chol’s execution.
Talks between the US and North Korea have stalled since the Vietnam summit, with no plans to get them back under way.
US Special Representative to North Korea Stephen Biegun plans to meet with Japanese and South Korean negotiators today and tomorrow in Singapore.
The February summit collapsed abruptly, with Trump calling off the talks.
Kim Jong-un might have gone into the summit with a faulty assessment from his team of Washington’s position and got caught flat-footed without a “Plan B” after Trump rejected North Korea’s disarmament offer, said Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow in Seoul for the Center for a New American Security.
If the Chosun report is true, it could mean more delays for the sputtering nuclear talks, she said.
A career diplomat from an elite North Korean family, Kim Hyok-chol made his international debut a few weeks before the Hanoi summit as Pyongyang’s new point man for nuclear negotiations, taking diplomats by surprise.
He became North Korea’s ambassador to Spain from 2015.
Two years later, Madrid expelled him in retaliation for North Korean nuclear and missile tests.
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