{"id":84125,"date":"2026-07-13T06:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T06:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/84125\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T06:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T06:24:07","slug":"north-koreas-kim-fires-warning-shot-at-own-military-with-corruption-purge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/84125\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea\u2019s Kim fires warning shot at own military with corruption purge"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Korea<\/a> rarely airs its dirty laundry in public, but Kim Jong-un<\/a>\u2019s latest purge of a senior military official was staged for maximum visibility \u2013 a warning, analysts say, to generals growing too comfortable with their expanding economic power that they answer to him alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cKim is effectively telling military and party leaders: \u2018Don\u2019t even think about it. You are under round-the-clock surveillance,\u2019\u201d said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Kim convened a rare joint meeting of the party, state and military \u2013 the first of its kind devoted specifically to corruption among senior officials, according to observers \u2013 to denounce former major general Pak Hui-chol in unusually public terms.<\/p>\n

Pak was, until recently, deputy director for organisational affairs in the Korean People\u2019s Army General Political Bureau, a powerful institution tasked with enforcing ideological conformity, loyalty and ensuring the military stays subordinate to the Workers\u2019 Party through an extensive network of political commissars and instructors.<\/p>\n

\"KimKim Jong-un presides over a meeting of the ruling Workers\u2019 Party of Korea\u2019s Central Military Commission in Pyongyang on Thursday. Photo: KCNA\/KNS\/AFP<\/p>\n

He was accused of running a four-year scheme that sold promotions, extracted bribes and filled key military posts with loyalists, all while embezzling state funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Korea rarely airs its dirty laundry in public, but Kim Jong-un\u2019s latest purge of a senior military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[174,141,31,34],"class_list":["post-84125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-corruption","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}