North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Picture: AFP

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has exiled, imprisoned or executed suspected opponents of his diplomatic outreach to the US and South Korea, while also targeting his country’s moneyed elite with asset seizures, according to a new report that details a purge of some 50 to 70 individuals.

The crackdown, portrayed as an anticorruption campaign in state-run media, suggests Mr Kim is looking to silence critics and shore up his regime’s finances in the face of international sanctions, said US security analysts and former South Korean intelligence officials.

Economic sanctions have pinched Pyongyang’s traditional sources of foreign currency, from exports to its access to the global banking system, and the confiscations represent a way for the regime to replenish much-needed funds.

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The purge takes aim at officials who have used their powerful positions to amass wealth illicitly — albeit on a North Korean scale, according to analysts and the report from the North Korea Strategy Center, a Seoul-based think tank founded by a North Korean defector. The report’s findings are based on interviews with 20 current and former high-ranking members of the Kim regime.

In a widely watched January 1 speech, Mr Kim publicly declared a war against corruption — a rare statement by any North Korean leader, according to former South Korean intelligence officials.

Party and government organs “should intensify the struggle to eradicate both serious and trivial instances of abuse of power, bureaucratism and corruption, which would wreak havoc … and undermine the socialist system,” Mr Kim said.

The remarks came after senior officials of the North Korean Guard Command — responsible for the personal security of the Kim family — were purged late last year when the regime accused them of managing a slush fund valued at tens of thousands of dollars, according to authors of the North Korea Strategy Center report.

The Wall Street Journal couldn’t independently confirm specifics of the purge, although South Korean analysts expressed confidence in the authors’ findings about Mr Kim’s new crackdown.

The sweep, which took off late last year, seeks mainly to confiscate foreign-cash piles amassed by the North Korean establishment, and is thought to have netted the regime as much as several million dollars, the authors of the North Korea Strategy Center report said. The authors said they interviewed 14 former North Korean officials, six current officials and five additional North Koreans now residing outside the North for their report.

US President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Mr Un. Picture: AP

“Many of these purges are related to money,” said Kim Jung-bong, a former South Korean intelligence official.

Although the North Korean leader has condoned some degree of corruption to satisfy loyalists for the sake of regime stability, sanctions appear to have altered his thinking: Pyongyang now views graft money as wealth taken from increasingly cash-strapped government coffers, the former official said.

The crackdown differs from previous ones directed by Pyongyang because it appears aimed at offences involving unremarkable, if not broadly practised, types of bribery, said the US and South Korean security analysts.

Mr Kim is thought to have purged around 400 individuals among the Pyongyang establishment since taking over from his father in late 2011, according to the authors, with a campaign against his influential uncle in 2013 accounting for about half that figure.

Researchers of the Kim regime don’t see the latest crackdown as evidence that Pyongyang is in political disarray, describing Mr Kim’s grip as firm. But in the near term, Mr Kim needs foreign cash as international sanctions block much of the country’s potential trade. In anticipation of eventual sanctions relief, and having publicly stressed the need to develop his economy, Mr Kim wants to clean up rampant graft to ensure economic projects aren’t undone by corruption, these people said.

The developments come as Mr. Kim prepares to meet President Trump for denuclearisation talks in Hanoi next week, when the North is expected to push for relief from sanctions in return for verifiable steps on disarmament.

Mr Kim has said he wants to refocus his policy toward the economy, which contracted by 3.5 per cent in 2017, according to South Korea’s central bank, the worst performance in two decades.

Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at CNA, a Virginia-based non-profit think tank, said Mr. Kim could be concerned that widespread bribery is hurting growth, and in turn his political legitimacy, given his desire to boost the economy.

“He is trying to put together, within a country, an economic plan that will actually take root,” he said. “And if you have an environment that is steeped in corruption, whatever you plant in that environment will die.”

The events separately reflect Mr Kim’s goal of taming the hawkish military and solidifying his authority while empowering doves within his cabinet as he continues diplomacy with Seoul and Washington.

Among the victims of the latest arrests and executions, according to the North Korea Strategy Center, are senior members of powerful military units that Mr Kim’s father never touched, lest he alienate the most ardent domestic supporters of the family’s rule. It is the first time that a North Korean leader has targeted the 100,000-member Guard Command, according to the authors and other experts on North Korea.

The sweep follows similar actions in 2017 against 10 members of the General Political Bureau — the political commissariat of the North Korean military. They were executed for crimes related to “foreign reserves bribery,” according to the NKSC report.

Additional reporting: Timothy W. Martin

The Wall Street Journal

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