NORTH KOREA'S ECCENTRIC LEADER "KIM JONG UN" FED HIS UNCLE TO 120 STARVING DOGS

 

 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed his uncle and a handful of the man’s aides by feeding them to a horde of 120 starving dogs, according to a shocking (but unconfirmed) account.

Jang Song Thaek, the former No. 2 official in the secretive regime, was stripped naked and tossed into a cage along with his five closest aides.

“Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called ‘quan jue’, or execution by dogs,” according to the Straits Times of Singapore. The daily relied on a description of the execution in a Hong Kong newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece of China’s government there. More established outlets in mainland China have not repeated the account.

“The entire process lasted for an hour, with Mr. Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader in North Korea, supervising it along with 300 senior officials,” the Straits Times said in a piece published Dec. 24, 2013, but only now getting traction in the United States. Two American national security officials contacted for comment said they had not heard that account, which first appeared in the Wen Wei Po newspaper on Dec. 12, 2013, and declined to vouch for its credibility.

Over the years, some North Korean defectors have reportedly told (also unconfirmed) stories of specially trained dogs used to maul prisoners. Human rights groups have long denounced the horrors of North Korea's prison-camp system. But the description is at odds with numerous other accounts that Jang was shot dead. And the Washington Post published a warning against taking the report at face value. And the Post was far from the only skeptical outlet.

While China acts as North Korea’s patron, relations between the two have been strained. The United States wants Beijing to take a more active role in pressuring Kim’s Stalinist regime in Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. The Straits Times suggested that China’s government leaked the account of the December execution to signal its anger at Kim’s government.

The United States has labored to get a grip on what kind of leader Kim Jong Un will be, amid worries in Washington that he is more reckless than his father, Kim Jong Il, whom he succeeded as supreme leader in December 2011.