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NK`s No. 2 man warns leader`s half-brother over criticism

Posted July. 16, 2012 23:29,   

North Korea`s No. 2 man has told the half-brother of the Stalinist country`s leader Kim Jong Un not to criticize the North, the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun said Saturday.

Jang Song Taek, vice chairman of the North`s powerful National Defense Commission, warned Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son of the late leader Kim Jong Il, to refrain from criticizing Pyongyang. Jang is the late Kim’s brother-in-law and closest aide to Kim Jong Un.

Quoting an informed source in Macau, the report said Jang advised Kim Jong Nam, when the latter briefly visited Pyongyang in May to refrain from criticizing the North through foreign media outlets.

The daily said Jang especially asked that Kim Jong Nam not comment on the fundamentals of the communist regime, including the third-generation succession of the ruling Kim family and the North Korean People’s Army.

Kim Jong Nam has blasted without reservation the North’s succession process and called the North’s currency reform last year a "highly ill-advised measure" in interviews with foreign media. He also claimed that things such as nuclear weapons should be eradicated, thus objecting to the North’s development of such weapons.

Yomiuri said Jang gave such advice to Kim Jong Nam because of fears that massive criticism against the half-brother of the North Korean leader rising in the North could eventually target Jang as well.



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