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19 March 2010

North Korea’s shocking execution

Finance chief executed for failed currency reform.

By George Eaton

Alistair Darling may have complained that Gordon Brown unleashed the “forces of hell” against him, but a bollocking from Charlie Whelan seems fairly mild compared to the fate of one North Korean finance chief.

Pak Nam-gi was executed by firing squad after being blamed for a botched currency reform. A South Korean news agency reported that the 77-year-old was put to death as “a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy”.

Clearly the worldwide campaign against what Albert Camus aptly termed “administrative murder” has a long way to go.

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