Tokyo, SAEDNEWS: Ri Yong-ho, who has not been seen in public for several years, would have been executed between the summer and autumn of last year along with four or five country officials, according to these sources who say they are close to domestic politics. North Korean to the newspaper’s correspondent in Beijing.
News about executions of members of the North Korean regime are frequent in the South Korean, Japanese or Hong Kong media, but the secrecy of the country makes it very difficult to contrast this information, which has often turned out to be wrong.
Although the sources consulted by Yomiuri assure that the reason for this alleged purge “is not clear”, they say that it could be related to an incident linked to the North Korean embassy in the United Kingdom, since most of these officials worked in some moment in this legation where Ri held the position of ambassador in the first decade of this century.
Ri, who became the North Korean delegate in the so-called six-party talks, was appointed as foreign minister in 2016, a position from which he played an important role in the negotiations with the US for the 2018 and 2019 summits between the North Korean leader , Kim Jong-un, and then US President Donald Trump.
It was Ri and the now Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui who offered a press conference to explain the North Korean position at the failed Hanoi summit in February 2019.
In January 2020, the North Korean regime replaced Ri with Ri Son-gwon, who headed the body in charge of relations with the South in the North during the most recent phase of rapprochement.
The news of the possible execution comes after a year in which North Korea has carried out a record number of weapons of mass destruction tests, around fifty, and in which tension on the Korean peninsula has reached new heights. highs.
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