It could not be independently confirmed whether Mr. Jang, long considered a champion of a Chinese-style economic reform in North Korea, actually made such a statement or whether the regime cooked up the assertion to justify his execution. But the long list of crimes that Mr. Jang and his followers were accused of having committed was tantamount to a highly unusual admission of what analysts said could be a serious and bloody power struggle over economic and other policies inside the impoverished but nuclear-armed country.
The speed with which Mr. Kim — or whoever else was engineering Mr. Jang’s downfall — hurried to execute him and make it public was a sign of instability and a lack of confidence in Mr. Kim’s grip on power, the analysts said. Normally, North Korea hides any signs of disloyalty to the Kim dynasty.
“If Kim Jong-un was sure of his control of power, he would not have needed to execute his uncle,” said Lee Byong-chul, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. “There will be big and small bloody purges, and at a time like this, desperate extremists may lash out. Pyongyang is no longer safe.”
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