On Thursday, in a plain courtroom in the centre of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, a 67-year-old man called Jang Song Thaek was sentenced to death as a traitor to his country.
His ‘crime’, according to the special military tribunal of the country’s Ministry of State Security, was to attempt ‘to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power’.
In its announcement of the sentence, the North Korean regime did not mince its words. Jang was ‘despicable human scum’, who was ‘worse than a dog’.
Furthermore, he ‘perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the Party and the leader for him’.
His supposed crimes against the regime included having ‘improper relations with several women’ and having ‘wined and dined at back parlours of deluxe restaurants’.
In addition, Jang was said to have ‘squandered foreign currency at casinos while he was receiving medical treatment in a foreign country under the care of the party’.
Worst of all perhaps, in the twisted logic of this supposed workers’ paradise, was that Jang was guilty of ‘such factional acts as dreaming different dreams’.
After supposedly admitting to his crimes, Jang was immediately executed, apparently by firing squad — further evidence, said Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman, of the ‘extreme brutality of the North Korean regime’. Yesterday, pictures of this broken man being led to his death were beamed around the world, in a rare and graphic display of the workings of this highly secretive nation.
These images followed those showing Jang being dramatically dragged away from a meeting of the ruling Politburo last Sunday, and his subsequent airbrushing from all official photographs.
However, what the regime’s official report fails to mention was that Jang, as well as being one the most senior leaders of the government, was also the uncle of the country’s 30-year-old despot, Kim Jong-un.
This brutal inter-familial conflict marks the culmination of what has been an extraordinary week in North Korea, one which has forced the world once again to ask the questions — how much of a threat to world peace is this rogue state that’s busy creating nuclear weapons, and who exactly is Kim Jong-un?
As the world’s youngest head of state, there is no doubt that he is shaping up to be the very model of a modern dictator.
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