North Korean state media’s coverage of the arrest, trial and subsequent execution of Jang Song Thaek was “tantamount to mass intimidation,” Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday. “Although only to be expected from one of the world’s worst dictatorships, such manipulation of news and information is disturbing,” the Paris-based group said in a statement. “The extensive…

 

North Korea’s external broadcasting service, the Voice of Korea, ran three reports last week on the arrest and subsequent trial and execution of Jang Song Thaek. The reports, in English, are reproduced below. The first report ran on December 9 and covered the meeting of the political bureau of the central committee of the Worker’s…

 

The United Nations Human Rights agency said it is following with concern news coming out of Pyongyang that Jang Song Thaek was executed this week. “This underscores the arbitrary nature of the system in the DPRK and the absence of transparency and due process which is required for the rule of law,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a…

 

Korean Central Television broadcast a 17-minute report on the special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security. The trial concluded by sentencing Jang to death. Here’s the clip:

 

High-level purges in North Korea have been typically quiet affairs in the past. Rumors would circulate that someone had been removed from office, state media would be analyzed for mentions of the person’s name and confirmation would usually only come months or years later when they either reemerged or someone else appeared in a position…

 

The Korean Central News Agency issued the following on December 13, 2013. The English version of the article was issued in two takes. The first take runs about half the length of the full story until the “(more)” below. The story was then updated with the second half. So when the story originally ran, only…

 

News reports that centered on Jang Song Thaek were deleted from the Korean Central News Agency’s website in the hours before state media announced his removal from power on Monday. The reports vanished from the Korean-language portion of the site at around 5am Korean time on Monday (8pm GMT Sunday), said Frank Feinstein, a New Zealand-based…

 

North Korea’s state media revealed in stunning detail on Monday the alleged infractions of Jang Song Thaek and showed still images of his being led from a Worker’s Party of Korea meeting by soldiers. The reports, which are unprecedented for North Korea, came just less than a week after South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported…