Seoul (AFP) - North Korea has executed a vice premier for showing disrespect during a meeting presided over by leader Kim Jong-Un, South Korea said Wednesday, after reports that he fell asleep.
The regime also banished two other senior officials, Seoul said, the latest in a slew of punishments Kim is believed to have ordered in what analysts say is an attempt to tighten his grip on power.
"Vice premier for education Kim Yong-Jin was executed," Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee said at a regular briefing.
Kim was killed by a firing squad in July as "an anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator," added an official at the ministry, who declined to be named, according to AFP and Yahoo.
"Kim Yong-Jin was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum" during a session of North Korea's parliament, and then underwent an interrogation that revealed other "crimes", the official told reporters.
The mass-selling JoongAng Ilbo reported on Tuesday that top regime figures had been punished, but identified the education official by a different name.
"He incurred the wrath of Kim after he dozed off during a meeting presided over by Kim," it quoted a source as saying.
"He was arrested on site and intensively questioned by the state security ministry".
South Korea's Yonhap news agency put the number of party officials executed during Kim Jong-Un's rule at over 100.