North Korea's Choe Yong-gon during a meeting in Seoul in a photo from March 3, 2004.(Photo: You Sung-Ho, AFP/Getty Images)
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered the execution of the country's vice premier earlier this year, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday.
Citing unnamed sources, Yonhap reported Choe Yong-gon, 63, was shot dead in May this year after expressing "discomfort" over Kim's forestation policy.
In a statement carried by the agency, South Korea's Unification Ministry said: "Choe has not been seen publicly for about ... eight months since he was last witnessed in December last year at the ceremony to mark the third anniversary of the death of North's former leader Kim Jong Il.
"The government is closely watching to see what might have happened to him."
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Information related to the highly secretive nation of North Korea is extremely difficult to confirm independently. Neither the Unification Ministry nor South Korea's spy agency could confirm the report of Choe's execution.
North Korea is undergoing its worst drought in a century, and the United Nations warned of mass starvation. The country launched a “greenification” plan last year, with authorities planting trees in a bid to replenish soil nutrients and stop<span style="color: Red;">*</span>erosion, according to
Radio Free Asia.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>However, many of the trees are unsuitable for the task because they take<span style="color: Red;">*</span>years to grow, but North Korean officials demanded the planting proceed more quickly, Radio Free Asia reported.
If confirmed, Choe's killing<span style="color: Red;">*</span>will be the latest in a series of executions said to have been ordered by the young leader since he took power in late 2011. The Associated Press reported last month that Kim had so far ordered the execution of about 70 officials "in a reign of terror" — far more than his late father Kim Jong Il, who executed about 10 people in his first years in power.
In May, a report emerged that Hyon Yong-chol, North Korea's defense minister, had apparently been executed, possibly with an anti-aircraft gun, in front of hundreds of people at a military school in the capital of Pyongyang for disloyalty to Kim.
In December 2013, Kim's uncle Jang Song Thaek — once considered North Korea's second most powerful man — was executed for alleged treason. Reports followed the next month that all direct relatives of Jang, who was married to Kim Jong Il's sister, had also been put to death.
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