Kim Jong-un has reportedly executed hundreds of people since he took power five years ago, a South Korean think tank revealed.
The young North Korean dictator ordered the executions of 340 people since 2011, the Institute for National Security Strategy asserted in a new report, CNN introduced Thursday.
Many of the executions were likely moves by Kim to secure his grip on power, as 140 of the people killed were senior officials in the North Korean government, military, and ruling party.
Kim has demonstrated “extreme” brutality during his reign, RAND Corporation Senior Defense Analyst Bruce Bennett told CNN.
Kim labeled his uncle a traitor and executed him in 2013.
He executed Defense Minister Hyon Yong-chol with an anti-aircraft gun in May, 2015.
“(It) would have torn his body apart,” Bennett said, referring to the excessive method of execution. “And of course Kim made sure the Defense Minister’s family was there to see the execution.”
Both agricultural minister Hwang Min and senior education ministry official Ri Yong-jin were executed at the end of an anti-aircraft gun this past summer. Ri was reportedly killed for dozing off during a meeting with the “Supreme Leader.”
Kim has poisoned people, put them in front of firing squads, blown people to bits with mortars, fed people to dogs, and burned people at the stake with flame throwers.
Kim “might be considered the world’s most dangerous man,” Bennett told CNN reporters.
The North Korean dictator and his documented unpredictable fury is disconcerting to U.S. officials, given his possession of nuclear weapons.
“Combining nuclear warheads with ballistic missile technology in the hands of a volatile leader like Kim Jong Un is a recipe for disaster,” Adm. Harry Harris, head of U.S. Pacific Command, said in December.
North Korea currently lacks the kind of reliable delivery systems for its nuclear weapons necessary to make it a global threat, but that is its current trajectory.
North Korea is the only country to have tested a nuclear weapon in this century.
“As long as Kim Jong-un is (in power), North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons,” Thae Yong-ho, a high-level North Korean defector who fled after experiencing disillusionment with Kim Jong-un’s “tyrannical reign of terror,” revealed Tuesday.
President-elect Donald Trump calls Kim a “maniac;” however, others warns that he is “cautious and calculating.”
Kim’s North Korea will likely be one of the major challenges the next administration will face.
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