Kim Jong-un secretly ordered the execution of his former foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, and four or five other North Korean diplomats last summer or fall, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing several sources familiar with the situation.

Sources cited by the daily, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, said the execution of the diplomats, who all worked there at one time, may have been a “problem” in the operation of the North Korean embassy in London.

Ri Yong-ho was North Korea’s foreign minister from 2016 to 2020.

One of the interlocutors of Japanese journalists says that the authorities in Pyongyang have begun to increase surveillance of their representatives abroad and several diplomats close to the executed officials fear that they may be “purged”.

Kim Jong Un allegedly purged the diplomats who organized the summit with Donald Trump

As the country’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho represented his country at international talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program and played a key role in organizing the 2018 and 2019 summits between Kim Jong Un and former US President Donald Trump.

In May 2019, the South Korean newspaper Joseon Ilbo reported that North Korea’s special envoy to the United States for nuclear issues, Kim Hyok Chol, was executed at Mirim Airport in Pyongyang, along with four foreign ministry officials, following the failure of the second summit between Kim Jong Jong and Kim. Trump.

“He was charged with espionage for the United States because he improperly reported on the progress of the negotiations without properly deciphering the intentions of the United States,” the quoted source said.

The summit, held in Hanoi, failed to produce a written agreement due to disagreements over the US demand for complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and Pyongyang’s request for sanctions to be lifted.

Pyongyang has not made any official statements regarding the execution of the diplomats, some sources claim that Kim Hyok Chol was simply imprisoned.