Officials Scared After Sister of North Korean Leader Has Their Colleagues Executed

“Devil woman” Kim Yo Jong orders probes of government agencies and executes officials who “get on her nerves,” they say.

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Government officials in North Korea are living in fear after a series of executions of their colleagues on the orders of leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, two officials told RFA.

Since her brother’s rule began in 2011, Kim Yo Jong’s rise to power in her own right culminated in her becoming an alternate member of the Politburo in April 2020. At the time, her brother was rumored to be having health issues and some experts believed she could have been an option to replace him in the event of his death.

But she was demoted during the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s Eighth Party Congress in January, becoming just a member of the Party’s Central Committee, with her rank reduced from first deputy director to deputy director. Still, she remains one of North Korea’s most powerful people, and sources said she has ordered executions of government officials simply for “getting on her nerves.”

“News that they shot to death a high-ranking official in Pyongyang is spreading among officials in Hyesan right now. We don’t know who the executed official was, but I heard from an official close to me that he was executed on the orders of Kim Yo Jong,” an official of an administrative agency in central northern Ryanggang province told RFA’s Korean Service May 13.

“In November last year, a gold smuggling incident was reported to the Central Party. A total of 10 state security officials and soldiers of the border security command were executed by firing squad in December, while nine residents were imprisoned for life. Dozens of their family members, meanwhile were sent to political prison camps.” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

RFA reported in November that that two soldiers were caught smuggling some $10 million worth of gold into China near Hyesan, on Nov. 1. One was arrested immediately, while the other, a border security guard, fled into China and was believed to be in the custody of Chinese authorities, according to local government sources.

Sources in the Ryanggang provincial government told RFA that the soldier caught Nov. 1 revealed during the investigation that they had been working with six residents on what had been their fifth trip smuggling gold to China. The six were arrested on Nov. 16, a judicial official told RFA at the time.

One of the Ryanggang sources told RFA in November there was a possibility that smugglers be executed because gold is strictly controlled by the state. Their offenses also included defying a strict border lockdown imposed to combat...

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