Kim Jong Un Reportedly Feeds Uncle to Starving Dogs; Is There Any Other Kind in North Korea?

The latest (unconfirmed, natch) news from the
nightmare on earth that is North Korea relates to the disposition
of Kim Jong Un’s uncle (the husband of his father’s sister), a high
ranking official in charge of relations with China who was branded
a traitor to the regime and executed. An unsourced December report
from a Hong Kong newspaper that nevertheless has ties to the
Chinese Communist Party claims Kim’s uncle was executed along with
several of his aides by being fed to 120 starving dogs. NBC News

picked it up today:

Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po
reported that Jang and his five closest aides were set upon by 120
hunting hounds which had been starved for five days. 

Kim and his brother Kim Jong Chol supervised the one-hour
ordeal along with 300 other officials, according to Wen Wei Po. The
newspaper added that Jang and other aides were “completely eaten
up.”

Over at the Washington Post, Max Fisher
points out the story is probably (probably!) not true,
explaining that Wen Wei Po isn’t a pro-Beijing source in the same
league as say, Xinhua, which has not reported on the execution by
dogs, and that no South Korean news agency has picked it up despite
the incentives to verify and disseminate the story.

The European cable news network euronews meanwhile,
suggests that if the story is not true, it was fabricated
either by Beijing or Pyongyang, although it certainly could’ve also
been fabricated by the Hong Kong newspaper itself.

As Fisher and euronews both highlight, however, North Korea’s
own self-imposed isolation makes it impossible to verify a story
like this, while its history of brutality and horror make it
impossible to dismiss an otherwise insane story with certitude. Kim
Jong Un has ordered the execution of many high-ranking North Korean
officials already in an effort to consolidate power since taking
over when his father died just more than two years ago. The public
manner in which his powerful uncle, Jang Sung-Taek, was denounced
as a traitor and stripped of his positions was certainly
unprecedented, while Kim’s desire to see an enemy executed in a way
so that “no trace of him” was left behind is not. South Korean
media reported a few months ago that Kim ordered an army minister
be executed by mortar fire to achieve just that result.