Traitor Jang Song Thaek Executed

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Pyongyang, December 13 (KCNA) -- Upon hearing the report on the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, the service personnel and people throughout the country broke into angry shouts that a stern judgment of the revolution should be meted out to the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional elements. Against the backdrop of these shouts rocking the country, a special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security was held on December 12 against traitor for all ages Jang Song Thaek.
The accused Jang brought together undesirable forces and formed a faction as the boss of a modern day factional group for a long time and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state.
The tribunal examined Jang's crimes.
All the crimes committed by the accused were proved in the course of hearing and were admitted by him.
A decision of the special military tribunal of the Ministry of State Security of the DPRK was read out at the trial.
Every sentence of the decision served as sledge-hammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.
The accused is a traitor to the nation for all ages who perpetrated anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of our party and state and the socialist system.
Jang was appointed to responsible posts of the party and state thanks to the deep political trust of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il and received benevolence from them more than any others from long ago.
He held higher posts than before and received deeper trust from supreme leader Kim Jong Un, in particular.
The political trust and benevolence shown by the peerlessly great men of Mt. Paektu were something he hardly deserved.
It is an elementary obligation of a human being to repay trust with sense of obligation and benevolence with loyalty.
However, despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog, 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.
From long ago, Jang had a dirty political ambition. He dared not raise his head when Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il were alive. But, reading their faces, Jang had an axe to grind and involved himself in double-dealing. He began revealing his true colors, thinking that it was just the time for him to realize his wild ambition in the period of historic turn when the generation of the revolution was replaced.
Jang committed such an unpardonable thrice-cursed treason as overtly and covertly standing in the way of settling the issue of succession to the leadership with an axe to grind when a very important issue was under discussion to hold respected Kim Jong Un in high esteem as the only successor to Kim Jong Il in reflection of the unanimous desire and will of the entire party and army and all people.
When his cunning move proved futile and the decision that Kim Jong Un was elected vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea at the Third Conference of the WPK in reflection of the unanimous will of all party members, service personnel and people was proclaimed, making all participants break into enthusiastic cheers that shook the conference hall, he behaved so arrogantly and insolently as unwillingly standing up from his seat and half-heartedly clapping, touching off towering resentment of our service personnel and people.
Jang confessed that he behaved so at that time as a knee-jerk reaction as he thought that if Kim Jong Un's base and system for leading the army were consolidated, this would lay a stumbling block in the way of grabbing the power of the party and state.
When Kim Jong Il passed away so suddenly and untimely to our sorrow, he began working in real earnest to realize its long-cherished greed for power.
Abusing the honor of often accompanying Kim Jong Un during his field guidance, Jang tried hard to create illusion about him by projecting himself internally and externally as a special being on a par with the headquarters of the revolution.
In a bid to rally a group of reactionaries to be used by him for toppling the leadership of the party and state, he let the undesirable and alien elements including those who had been dismissed and relieved of their posts after being severely punished for disobeying the instructions of Kim Jong Il and kowtowing to him work in a department of the Central Committee of the WPK and organs under it in a crafty manner.
Jang did serious harm to the youth movement in our country, being part of the group of renegades and traitors in the field of youth work bribed by enemies. Even after they were disclosed and purged by the resolute measure of the party, he patronized those cat's paws and let them hold important posts of the party and state.

Szabo wrote:

That was quick! A few days ago he was being accused of womanising and now it's changed to him planning on overthrowing the government?!

Last week, I'm sure I read that two other party members had been executed as well.

That's some fast-track executions!

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To be fair, most of the actual charges against Jang were that he was exceptionally corrupt and that he was confronted with this fact various times in the past. Corruption is a big problem in the DPRK and Jang is identified by Western analysts as having been a "pro-market" figure, meaning that it's quite likely he wanted to liberalize trade and other rules to legitimize the illicit profits he was already making.

Of course this doesn't mean those denouncing him aren't corrupt themselves.

Comrade Gulper wrote:

In the days of the Roman Empire, whenever a new Emperor was elected, one of the first tasks of the Praetorian Guard was to locate and destroy as many of that Emperor's relatives as possible (outside of his immediate family and offspring). A wholesale slaughter of uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins, and in-laws was the norm. It's no surprise that dynastic politics in modern DPRK follows upon the same principle.

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More likely is that purging the pro-market/pro-Chinese faction allows Kim to be more assertive in his dealings with China, which has long since wanted to open up the DPRK's economy and have it adopt a less "defiant" foreign policy course. Jang had privately fallen from grace in 2004 under Kim Jong Il only to be rehabilitated two years later, which suggests this faction has had considerable influence.

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Couldn't he have just put the guy in prison?

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Why? So the West can try to induce Korea to free Jang from prison so he can do what his partner Hwang Jang-yop failed to do? So that if they invaded the North or Kim Jong-un and/or the Worker's Party was otherwise overthrown, that he would restore capitalism and turn it into a rescource neo-colony to Western, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and South Korean corporations? I've read Alejandro Cao de Buenos' blog a while ago and the impression I have had of Jang (based on that and other articles I've read about this) was that of a would-be oligarch who used his party position to serve and enrich himself.

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If you want to condemn Korea for executing a counter-revolutionary who was most likely trying to restore capitalism to the North, then don't be a hypocrite and start condemning Stalin for killing Vlasov and Bukharin. For that matter, condemn every single communist who ever executed counter-revolutionaries.

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Now I'll let everybody get back to mourning the latest innocent man to fall victim to the horrors of totalitarian communism.

Misuzu wrote:

Why? So the West can try to induce Korea to free Jang from prison so he can do what his partner Hwang Jang-yop failed to do? So that if they invaded the North or Kim Jong-un and/or the Worker's Party was otherwise overthrown, that he would restore capitalism and turn it into a rescource neo-colony to Western, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and South Korean corporations? I've read Alejandro Cao de Buenos' blog a while ago and the impression I have had of Jang (based on that and other articles I've read about this) was that of a would-be oligarch who used his party position to serve and enrich himself. If you want to condemn Korea for executing a counter-revolutionary who was most likely trying to restore capitalism to the North, then don't be a hypocrite and start condemning Stalin for killing Vlasov and Bukharin. For that matter, condemn every single communist who ever executed counter-revolutionaries. Now I'll let everybody get back to mourning the latest innocent man to fall victim to the horrors of totalitarian communism.

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Right now, it's mostly Chinese and South Korean corporations

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But how odd that a sneaky capitalist-roader could have hid himself in the National Defence Commission, right next to Kim Jong-il, for so long.

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the bottom line is that anyone on the left with a modicum of principles categorically rejects capital punishment.

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Even when it comes to "executing counter-revolutionaries", it didn't work, it would not have worked even if they had gotten around to killing Khrushchev, and it won't work today.

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In any case, that was then, and now is now.

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What is your evidence that the North his reverted to capitalism?

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By that logic, Stalin must have restored capitalism to the USSR when he entered into numerous joint ventures with Western corporations.

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As long as private property remains outlawed in the DPRK, then I will say that capitalist relations has not been restored.

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Plenty of opportunists were able to worm their way into high position of power so that they can be misused; after all, it is very common to mis-judge somebody's character. People like Deng and Gorbachev gained power precisely because the purging mechanisms were too weak to stop them.

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It was necessary to execute Jang because he was a ringleader of a conspiracy to overthrow the DPRK government that has been going on since at least the mid-1990s. Now that both him and his ally Hwang Jang-yop are dead, the pro-capitalist faction has lost their major leaders.

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I don't deny that the North Korean government has committed excesses, just as the Soviet government committed its own excesses during the Great Purge.