‘NK Army chief fired for defiant attitudes’

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un recently dismissed the reclusive regime’s Army chief for his refusal to cooperate in a move to tighten his grip on the North’s military, a ruling party lawmaker said Thursday, citing information provided by the country’s spy agency.

“Gen. Ri Yong-ho appears to have been forced to step down for his uncooperative attitude toward North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s push to tighten his control over the military,” said Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun of the ruling Saenuri Party after attending a closed-door session of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee.

North Korea announced the dismissal of Vice Marshal Ri last week, sparking speculation about a possible power struggle in the Stalinist regime.

He said the National Intelligence Service (NIS) analyzed that the young leader Kim’s aunt Kim Kyong-hui and her husband Jang Song-thaek are strengthening their roles as the young leader’s guardians by respectively providing mental support and policy advice.

He noted that the spy agency views the North’s three-generation hereditary power succession has been completed with Kim’s promotions to the top levels of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party, government and military.

Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, ascended to power in December last year following the death of his father and longtime leader Kim Jong-il.

Following Ri’s dismissal, the North announced Kim’s promotion to marshal, the highest functioning military rank, suggesting that he successfully completed his inheritance of power from his father.

NIS chief Won Sei-hoon and other top intelligence officials attended the parliamentary session.

Some raised the possibility that an armed clash took place during the communist regime’s removal of Ri, saying gunshots would have been exchanged in the process of dismissing him.

A local daily went as far as reporting that Ri might have been wounded or killed when his guards engaged in an armed conflict following his abrupt dismissal.

It claimed that a gun battle would have broken out when Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, director of the People’s Army General Political Bureau, tried to detain Ri upon the orders of Kim Jong-un.

This was flatly refuted by multiple military sources saying none of the military intelligence spotted any unusual military relocation or unusual signs in the North.

“If Ri were removed by force, his loyalists would have resisted it by force and thus we would have found out about it by using our intelligence assets,” a senior official of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. <The Korea Times/Lee Tae-hoon>

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