N Korea Executes 30 Officials For Failed Talks With S Korea

North Korea has been busy purging its government ranks by killing officials who have somehow failed in some form or other. According to a new report from Amnesty International, 30 people who were tasked with improving relations with South Korea were either executed or killed in apparent "staged traffic accidents." Of course,  the main reason those talks have failed is because the whacked out former "dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, and his equally touched son, Kim Jong-un, keep playing with their nukes and ballistic missiles. The country also happens to maintain one of the largest armies in the world, right on South Korea's doorstep. But no matter, 30 of those officials quickly dispensed with last year.

Then this January, when dear "Father's" fiefdom was passed on to his pudgy, 29-year-old baby-faced son, another 200 were either killed or sent off to North Korean gulags. Just making sure that any potential dissension was stopped before it happened. Amnesty estimates there are some 200,000 North Koreans rotting away in gulags.

But members of the oligarchy have never been safe in communist North Korea. Pak Nam-ki (or sometimes Nam-gi) Director of the Planning and Finance Department- was executed in 2010 for being

"a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy"

In other words, he messed up an already incredibly messed up economy by revaluating the local currency, which caused further drastic problems.

Since relations with South Korea will continue to remain soured, and the economy will continue to suffer (unless they make major reforms), I'm sure there will be plenty more shipped off to gulags or executed.

After the failed missile test in April, there is talk that they might try again on May 28, Memorial Day:

"The North Korean regime is hell-bent on being a belligerent actor," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, during a visit to Seoul with a congressional delegation. "And I think that on holidays or sad commemorations like Memorial Day weekend is when the leadership tries to provoke the democratic allies into action."

We shall see.