A full meeting of the Politburo of the Chosun Workers’ Party Central Committee was convened on Sunday in Pyongyang, apparently in order to release news of the crimes allegedly committed by Jang Sung Taek that led to his removal. News of the purge emerged last week, making headlines worldwide.
According to an extended report carried by Chosun Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Jong Eun led the meeting, which was attended by all members and alternate members of the Politburo.
It revealed that Jang, the former Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission and Director of the Department of Administration of the Workers’ Party, was purged for his “anti-Party” and “counter-revolutionary” acts. These include undermining the “work of establishing the Party’s unitary leadership system” and ill-defined “enormous harm to efforts to build a thriving nation and improve standards of living.”
Notably, the piece explained, “Jang and his followers did not sincerely accept the line and policies of the Party […] but deliberately neglected their implementation, distorted them and openly played down the policies of the Party,” and, “In the end, they made no scruple of perpetrating such counter-revolutionary acts as disobeying orders issued by the supreme commander of the Chosun People’s Army.”
People linked to Jang “weakened the Party’s guidance over judicial, prosecution and security agencies, bringing very harmful consequences to the work for protecting the social system, policies and people,” it went on. Jang “seriously obstructed the nation’s economic affairs and the improvement of the standard of people’s living in violation of the pivot-to-the-Cabinet principle and the Cabinet responsibility principle laid down by the Party.”
