Execution Raises Doubts About Kim’s Grip on North Korea

Execution Raises Doubts About Kim’s Grip on North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — Perhaps one of the most intriguing details in North Korea’s announcement of the execution of Jang Song-thaek, the uncle and presumed mentor of the leader Kim Jong-un, was what its state-run media reported that Mr. Jang said while confessing to plotting to overthrow Mr. Kim’s government.

“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me or by mobilizing armed forces under the control of my confidants,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Friday quoted Mr. Jang as having said on Thursday during his court-martial. “I thought the army might join in the coup if the living of the people and service personnel further deteriorate in the future.”

It could not be independently confirmed whether Mr. Jang, long considered a champion of a Chinese-style economic reform in North Korea, actually made such a statement or whether the regime cooked up the assertion to justify his execution. But the long list of crimes that Mr. Jang and his followers were accused of having committed was tantamount to a highly unusual admission of what analysts said could be a serious and bloody power struggle over economic and other policies inside the impoverished but nuclear-armed country.

The speed with which Mr. Kim — or whoever else was engineering Mr. Jang’s downfall — hurried to execute him and make it public was a sign of instability and a lack of confidence in Mr. Kim’s grip on power, the analysts said. Normally, North Korea hides any signs of disloyalty to the Kim dynasty.

“If Kim Jong-un was sure of his control of power, he would not have needed to execute his uncle,” said Lee Byong-chul, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. “There will be big and small bloody purges, and at a time like this, desperate extremists may lash out. Pyongyang is no longer safe.”

North Korea on Friday hinted at such purges by condemning “undesirable and alien elements” in “important posts of the party and state,” in “ministries and national institutions,” and in agencies dealing with foreign trade, as well as Mr. Jang’s acquaintances in the military.

Mr. Jang, 67, was executed Thursday immediately after being convicted on treason charges, North Korea said. Suh Sang-kee, a senior governing party lawmaker in Seoul, quoted South Korean intelligence officials as saying that Mr. Jang was executed by a machine-gun firing squad.

Long thought to be the second most influential man in the North, Mr. Jang was the most prominent North Korean purged and executed under Mr. Kim, who South Korean officials said was resorting to “a reign of terror” to consolidate his power. Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hee, a sister of Kim Jong-il, Mr. Kim’s late father, who ruled the North before his son. The fate of Ms. Kim was not known, though analysts say it would be unlikely for Kim Jong-un to harm a blood relative.

“The way they dealt with Jang Song-thaek was highly unusual and unprecedented in North Korean history,” said the Unification Minister Ryoo Kilj-jae, South Korea’s top North Korea policy maker. “We are watching the recent series of developments in the North with a deep concern.”

The State Department said Thursday that it could not verify the execution, but a deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said if it did happen, “this is another example of the extreme brutality of the North Korean regime.”

Kim Kwan-jin, the South’s defense minister, said that the South Korean military was being extra vigilant as it feared that the North might attempt a military provocation against the South to defuse what might be a domestic political crisis.

“The North Korean military may make a wrong decision for various reasons,” he said. “There may be a competition within the military to show loyalty to Kim.”

Mr. Jang had been a fixture in the North Korean elite for the past 40 years, serving in major party posts under Kim Jong-il and gaining more power under his son, Kim Jong-un. During a party meeting on Sunday, North Korea stripped Mr. Jang of all his powerful posts and expelled him from the ruling Workers’ Party, calling him an “anti-party, counterrevolutionary factional leader.” On Monday, state-run television showed the spectacle of the once-powerful man being hauled off from the party meeting by uniformed guards.