Former pop singer and 11 others have been machined gunned, their families are in prison

Aug 29, 2013 12:52 GMT  ·  By
Singer Hyon Song-wol, former lover of Kim Jong-un, has been executed in front of her family
   Singer Hyon Song-wol, former lover of Kim Jong-un, has been executed in front of her family

Last year, one of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un’s appearances made room for a lot of speculation on whether he had rekindled the romance with a former flame, former pop star Hyon Song-wol. She and 11 other artists have been executed.

Reports of the execution come (with some delay) from the South Korean media via The Telegraph, which informs that Song-wol and other artists were arrested on suspicion of having broken the country’s law on adult content.

All 12 were part of the Unhasu Orchestra, and were singers, musicians or dancers.

In other words, they were accused of making and distributing adult videos. They were machine gunned only 3 days after the arrest, on August 20, and their families have been sent to prison.

Other reports say that the order came directly from Kim Jong-un.

“All 12 were machine-gunned three days later, with other members of North Korea's most famous pop groups and their immediate families forced to watch. The onlookers were then sent to prison camps, victims of the regime's assumption of guilt by association, the reports stated,” The Telegraph reports.

“They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” a source is quoted as saying.

Song-wol and the other victims were treated as political dissidents, which has sparked some debate on whether they were murdered for political reasons and not just because they had reportedly made compromising videos of themselves for profit.

“It is simply not believable that their punishment was execution [for such a crime]. They could have been made to disappear into the prison system there instead,” Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University, says.

“There is a political reason behind this. Or, as Kim's wife once belonged to the same group, it is possible that these executions are more about Kim's wife,” Professor Shigemura adds.

Indeed, there have been voices saying that Kim’s wife was very unhappy that Song-wol was still high profile, especially after the recent reports that she had rekindled the romance with the North Korean leader.