North Korea's defence minister has been executed with an anti-aircraft weapon after falling asleep in a meeting attended by Kim Jong-un and daring to question the "Supreme Leader", South Korea's spy agency has claimed.
General Hyon Yong-chol was killed at a military training facility on April 30, according to a report to the South Korean government from the country's intelligence service.
Gen Hyon suffered the unusual fate of being dismembered by heavy calibre shells fired from an anti-aircraft gun, instead of simply being shot.
Mr Kim inherited the position of "Supreme Leader" at the age of 30 when his father died in 2011. So far this year, the youthful dictator is believed to have ordered the executions of 15 senior officials. Earlier this week, a defector claimed that Mr Kim poisoned his aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, in May last year. Mr Kim had earlier denounced her husband, Jang Sung-taek, as "human scum" before having this senior politician executed for high treason.
The constant bloodletting and the particularly brutal method of dispatching Gen Hyon could be a sign that Mr Kim's grip on power is seriously threatened. "The only time they would reserve a punishment as dramatic as this is for an attempted coup," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University and an authority on North Korea.
"This is a clear message and a demonstration - to the public, but more importantly to the military - of the anger of Mr Kim and just what he will do to anyone who shows disloyalty to his regime. He is underlining his rule through terror."
Gen Hyon's alleged offence was to have shown insufficient respect to the young leader, notably by dozing off during a meeting, and failing to carry out the dictator's orders. There are also suggestions that Gen Hyon, who was appointed minister of the People's Armed Forces less than a year ago, publicly disagreed with Mr Kim on policy matters.
His execution at the age of 66 coincides with unconfirmed reports of unrest in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. Mr Kim hastily cancelled a planned trip to Moscow to join President Vladimir Putin for Russia's celebration of Victory Day on May 9. His absence from one of the few international occasions that a North Korean leader is able to attend could have been explained by trouble at home.
"Mr Kim cancelled his plans to go to Moscow very late and it is very possible that he learnt of an attempt to overthrow him by the military," said Prof Shigemura. "But this just underlines the instability of his regime and the deep unrest that goes all the way to the top of the North Korean military."
North Korea is believed to possess up to 20 nuclear warheads and one of the world's most formidable arsenals of ballistic missiles. If Mr Kim's regime were to collapse, every country in Asia would be deeply alarmed about what might happen to those weapons.
