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 Hyon Yong Chol, who headed the isolated nuclear-capable country's
military, was charged with treason, including disobeying Kim and
falling asleep during an event at which North Korea's young leader
was present, according to South Korean lawmakers briefed in a
closed-door meeting with the spy agency on Wednesday.
His execution was watched by hundreds of people, according to NIS
intelligence shared with lawmakers.
It was not clear how the NIS obtained the information and it is not
possible to independently verify such reports from within secretive
North Korea.
"The NIS official said it had been confirmed by multiple sources. It
is still just intelligence, but he said they were confident," Shin
Kyoung-min, a lawmaker and member of the opposition New Politics
Alliance for Democracy, who attended the briefing, told Reuters.
Experts on North Korea said there was no sign of instability in
Pyongyang, but there could be if purges continued.
 Kim had previously ordered the execution of 15 senior officials this
year as punishment for challenging his authority, according to the
NIS. In all, some 70 officials have been executed since Kim took
over after his father's death in 2011, Yonhap news agency cited the
NIS as saying.
"There is no clear or present danger to Kim Jong Un's leadership or
regime stability, but if this continues to happen into next year,
then we should seriously start to think about revising our scenarios
on North Korea," said Michael Madden, an expert on the country's
leadership who contributes to the 38 North think tank in Washington.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in
Seoul, said the regime could "reach its limit" if Kim's purges
continued.
"But it's still too early to tell," said Koh.
The lawmakers said Hyon, 66, was executed at a firing range at the
Kanggon Military Training Area, 22 km (14 miles) north of Pyongyang,
according to the NIS.
The U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said last
month that, according to satellite images, the range was likely used
for an execution by ZPU-4 anti-aircraft guns in October. The target
was just 30 meters (100 feet) away from the weapons, which have a
range of 8,000 meters, it said.
INSULAR, OPAQUE
Hyon was said to have shown disrespect to Kim by dozing off at a
military event, the Seoul lawmakers said, citing the agency
briefing. Hyon was also believed to have voiced complaints against
Kim and had not followed his orders several times, according to the
lawmakers.
He was arrested in late April and executed three days later without
legal proceedings, the NIS told lawmakers.
"When the NIS is talking officially, they are relatively reliable.
There are good reasons to believe it is true, but we cannot be 100
percent sure yet," said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at
Kookmin University in Seoul.
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Last month, Hyon traveled to Moscow, where he spoke at a security
conference. He was reported by North Korean state media to have
appeared at an event in late April - shortly before the NIS told
lawmakers he was executed - an outward indication that all was
normal.
North Korea is one of the most insular - and unpredictable -
countries in the world and its power structure is highly opaque. The
current leader is the third generation of the Kim family that has
ruled with near-absolute power since the country was formed in 1948.
Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, was appointed successor to the
North Korean throne two decades before coming to power in 1994,
during which time he was able to purge and alienate potential
political challengers. Kim Jong Un, by contrast, has had few years
to consolidate power.
In 2013, Kim Jong Un purged and executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek,
once considered the second most powerful man in Pyongyang's
leadership, for factionalism and committing crimes damaging to the
economy, along with a group of officials close to him.
Lankov said that the purges in Pyongyang did not necessarily point
to instability.
"The common assumption is that it's bad for stability, but I'm not
so sure," he said, adding it could be Kim consolidating his power
base and removing people who had not sufficiently proved their
loyalty.
Pyongyang's military leadership has been in a state of perpetual
reshuffle since Kim Jong Un took power. He has changed his armed
forces chief four times since coming to power, while his father, Kim
Jong Il, who ruled the country for almost two decades, replaced his
chief just three times.
The South Korean spy agency told lawmakers that Ma Won Chun, known
as North Korea's chief architect of new infrastructure under Kim,
was also purged or punished, the lawmakers said.
Ma had also once served as vice director of the secretive Finance
and Accounting Department in the ruling Workers' Party and, until
recently, was effectively the regime's money man.
(Editing by Tony Munroe and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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