North Korea has issued a demand to South Korea’s government to extradite former president Park Geun-hye in response to a dubiously sourced Japanese news article claiming Park planned to assassinate dictator Kim Jong-un.
The left-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper published a report citing one anonymous source, who claimed that a plan existed to “oust” Kim, but that details on the plan were “sketchy.”
Pyongyang has responded with a demand South Korea extradite the “traitor Park” and a promise that she would face “the death penalty” if taken to North Korea. The repressive communist Kim regime assassinated both of Park’s parents, former South Korean president Park Chung-hee and First Lady Yuk Young-soo in the 1970s.
A joint statement from Pyongyang’s Security Ministries and Central Public Prosecutor’s Office, published at the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), read:
A revelation showed that Park Geun Hye of south Korea pushed forward the operation of ‘removing the north’s leadership’ in collusion with the Intelligence Service during her tenure, in the wake of the recent detection of a group of hideous terrorist criminals who were infiltrated by the CIA of the U.S. and the puppet IS into the DPRK for the purpose of state-sponsored terrorism against its supreme leadership with the use of bio-chemical substance.
The statement continued:
We declare at home and abroad that we will impose death penalty on traitor Park Geun Hye and ex-Director of the puppet Intelligence Service Ri Pyong Ho and their groups, criminals of hideous state-sponsored terrorism who hatched and pressed for the heinous plot to hurt the supreme leadership of the DPRK.
Park and the alleged conspirators “can never make any appeal even though they meet miserable dog’s death any time, at any place and by whatever methods from this moment.”
“We do not hide that should the U.S. and the South Korean authorities defy this warning and challenge our resolute measure, they will be made to pay a dear price in an irresistible physical way,” the statement added, suggesting that North Korea would attempt to kill America officials, as well.
The statement accused former intelligence chief Lee Byung-Ho of orchestrating the plot to kill Kim Jong-un and threatened to impose the “death penalty” on him as well.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Agency (NIS) responded to North Korea’s typical vitriol by denying the report in question, saying in a statement it “had no grounds,” and are refusing to address the apparent extradition call.
The report, published in the Asahi Shimbun, cites “a source” as stating that Park “approved a covert plan to oust North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—including assassination.”
“Although details of the actual plan are sketchy, the options included Kim’s retirement, political exile or even assassination,” Asahi reported. “The plotters apparently considered staging an ‘accident’ on the road or over water to eliminate Kim, but tight security prevented any mission from being carried out, the source said.”
Park has long irritated North Korea. As president, she maintained a hard-line stance against the communist dictatorship and approved the installation of the American Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to protect from incoming North Korean fire.
As a result, North Korea’s state media regularly referred to Park as a “bitch,” “old cat,” “cold-blooded animal,” and other epithets. This month, the KCNA accused Park of being “extremely insolent as to be in the dock, changing her dresses as her habit of whore in the days of Chongwadae office.”
Park is currently behind bars, arrested for alleged improprieties as President. Last year, an investigation revealed that Park had granted a close friend unaffiliated to the government access to national security secrets and requested advice for editing major speeches.
Despite her effusive apologies, Park was impeached and imprisoned for corruption following the revelation of allegedly inappropriate business dealings with her friend, Choi Soon-sil’s, cult.