Tipsheet

Fifteen: The Number of "Senior Officials" Kim Jong Un Reportedly Executed This Year

This is what dictators do. When their subordinates fail them – or they feel threatened – they start killing them.

In other words, dictators like Kim Jong Un do not believe in laying people off, or terminating them non-violently:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is continuing to rule with an iron fist, having ordered the execution of about 15 senior officials so far this year, according to an assessment by South Korean intelligence agents, a lawmaker who attended a closed briefing said.

Shin Kyung-min, a lawmaker with the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, told a handful of reporters that he had been given the information by the South Korean National Intelligence Service.

“Kim,” as Dennis Rodman affectionately calls him, is a cold and ruthless killer – although perhaps not as ruthless as we once imagined. Sure, he killed his own uncle and chief deputy two years ago, but it appears, my friends, that he at least had the decency to not feed him to a pack of rapid and starving animals. Instead, he supposedly lined him up against a wall somewhere – and had his acolytes gun him down in cold blood.

How merciful.

By the way, these dozen or so executions have not been officially confirmed by anyone. Hence the "reportedly" in my headline. Still, does not offing 15 of his top deputies sound like something Kim Jong Un would do?

After all, as Billy Madison might say, North Korean's dictator is a bad, bad man.