North Korea Publicly Executed Administrator Of Guesthouse Where South Korean President Stayed

The chief administrator of a Pyongyang guest house was publicly executed in December for embezzling millions of dollars from the government, a local North Korean daily reported.

According to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, the unidentified administrator of the official Paekhwawon guesthouse in Pyongyang was found guilty of corruption after the ruling Workers' Party's Organization and Guidance Department conducted a raid on his property in October, on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s orders.

The guesthouse in question was the same one where South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his family stayed when he visited his neighboring nation in September for the inter-Korean summit. The guesthouse was supposed to be remodeled ahead of Moon’s visit and that was when the administrator reportedly siphoned off money for his personal use, listing extraordinary expenses for construction work.

“Kim Jong-un reportedly flew into a rage when he saw the enormous bill for the refurbishment," the source told the local newspaper. "At his instruction, the Organization and Guidance Department conducted a thorough inspection to find out whether any money had been embezzled. During the crackdown, $3 million was found in the manager’s house. The chief was also convicted for causing scandal with several female workers in the guesthouse.”

The administrator, who held the rank of a colonel and was a part of the troop in charge of security for Kim, his family members and other senior officials of the regime, was also additionally charged with having affairs with female workers at the guesthouse. According to a second source, cases of corruption was pretty common in the guesthouse as the agency in charge of managing funds for the North Korean leader’s family was the one which provided goods to the facility.

His execution was held in Pyongyang and was attended by military officers and senior officials from the Workers' Party. The execution of the administrator was part of a larger crackdown on corruption in the country. Around the same time, three senior officials were also execution, although the details of their crimes were not clear.

During his State of the Union address on Feb. 5, President Donald Trump announced his second summit with Kim will be held in Vietnam on Feb. 27-28. Although North Korea has made no official announcement about the summit so far, political experts are not seeing it in a negative light.

"North Korea has made clear its stance [on denuclearization] repeatedly and sufficiently before, including in leader Kim's New Year's Day speech. There seems to be no need to add anything to them [through media announcement]," Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far East Studies at Kyungnam University, told Yonhap News Agency.

"If working-level talks do not go well, or their demands are not likely to go through, it could say something about the summit through the media. At least until now, the North appears to be indicating that its own stance and things are going on in a positive way," he added.