Mick Hartley

The Times are reporting the execution of the wretched official who oversaw the Great Currency Confiscation:

The North Korean official who oversaw last year’s disastrous currency revaluation has been executed by firing squad, according to reports from South Korea.

Pak Nam Gi, the former finance director of the ruling Workers’ Party, was shot in Pyongyang last week, according to the Yonhap news agency and a South Korean newspaper.

Yonhap quoted an unidentified North Korean source saying that the official had been convicted of treason for “ruining the national economy as the son of a big landlord who infiltrated the ranks of revolutionaries”.

It's a chilling line: "the son of a big landlord" – as though the crime can only be explained by his tainted blood – the impure capitalist among the pure-blooded revolutionaries. It's the same thinking which condemns the whole families of individuals convicted of counter-revolutionary activities to a life in the camps: guilt by genetic association. Which reinforces B R Myers' point that the regime is obsessed by racial and hereditary purity.

The story's also carried by the Chosun Ilbo.