{"id":18460,"date":"2012-02-16T15:16:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T06:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.dailynk.com\/en\/?p=18460"},"modified":"2020-01-17T08:54:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T23:54:04","slug":"helicopter-crash-kills-nk-commerce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/helicopter-crash-kills-nk-commerce\/","title":{"rendered":"Helicopter Crash Kills NK Commerce Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[imText1]A helicopter containing North Korea\u2019s Minister of Commerce Kim Bong Cheol and gifts to be given away for Kim Jong Il\u2019s birthday has crashed, killing five people.<\/p>\n<p>An inside source revealed the news this morning, saying, \u201cOn the 14th a helicopter carrying special holiday gifts to Sundo for the General\u2019s birthday crashed, resulting in the deaths of five people including the cabinet commerce minister, commercial director of North Pyongan Province and cabinet officials.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The authorities were apparently intending to deliver gifts to the remote island\u2019s residents and broadcast footage of the event so as to propagate the notion of Kim Jong Eun\u2019s kindness and generosity.  <\/p>\n<p>However, the source continued, \u201cAs the helicopter was landing its tail hit a rock and it crashed. The pilot and television film crew managed to escape but Minister Kim Bong Cheol could not escape and died when the helicopter exploded.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Central Party has said that it will hold official funeral services for them today or tomorrow as persons who died in the line of duty, but it is not clear yet. They might delay that to avoid ruining the festive atmosphere\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople find it ironic that because of the dead General\u2019s birthday they would delay the funeral of people who were alive,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The small island is located 40km north of the larger Taehwa Island, part of Cheolsan County in North Pyongan Province, only a short distance from China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[imText1]A helicopter containing North Korea\u2019s Minister of Commerce Kim Bong Cheol and gifts to be given away for Kim Jong Il\u2019s birthday has crashed, killing five people. An inside source revealed the news this morning, saying, \u201cOn the 14th a helicopter carrying special holiday gifts to Sundo for the General\u2019s birthday crashed, resulting in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":18462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v28.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Helicopter Crash Kills NK Commerce Minister - North Korea News \u2014 Daily NK | Latest DPRK Updates 2026<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/helicopter-crash-kills-nk-commerce\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Helicopter Crash Kills NK Commerce Minister\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[imText1]A helicopter containing North Korea\u2019s Minister of Commerce Kim Bong Cheol and gifts to be given away for Kim Jong Il\u2019s birthday has crashed, killing five people. 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