All You Need Is Love

"They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band, as well as the families of the victims looked on."
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper

War criminals? Threats to the stability of the country? Actually a dozen entertainers. Specifically, North Korean singers, musicians and dancers with Hyon Song-wol's band. She was a popular singer, a beautiful young and talented woman. And her name was at one time twinned with that of Kim Jong Un, the ferocious little tyrant of North Korea. They had a long affair, and it was popularly assumed they were lovers.

North Korean singer, Hyon Song Wol of former band Bochonbo Electronic Music Band

Several years ago the world became aware that the very attractive, lithe young woman seen often at Kim Jong Un's side at official functions was his wife. Not Hyon Song-wol, however. His wife , Ri Sol-ju had also been a comely and talented member of the Unhasu Orchestra. Now she is married to the tyrant of North Korea, and the mother of his child.

Kim Jong Il before his death and before his son Jong Un became leader of the country, disapproved of his son's relationship with Hyon Song-wol. He was ordered to stop seeing her She then married an officer in the military and became a mother herself. The rumours persisted that the two, Jong Un and Song-wol continued to see one another.

Dictator: Kim Jong-un and wife Ri Sol-ju

Reason given to the public that merited the machine-gun execution of the dozen entertainers? Accusations levelled against them of having produced pornographic videos of themselves, and putting the videos out for sale. What might have been far worse, however, are accusations that when they were arrested they were found to have bibles in their possession.

Effectively then making of them political dissidents. Rumours also circulated that they supported an opposition political party. A rival political faction in Pyongyang. After their execution, the onlookers, their immediate families who were forced to watch their loved ones executed, were sent off to prison camps; guilty by familial association.

"If these people had only made pornographic videos, then it is simply not believable that their punishment was execution. They could have been made to disappear into the prison system there instead", suggested Toshimitsu Thigemura, professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on North Korea. The execution took place, he feels, for "political reasons".

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"Or", he ventured further: "...it is possible that these executions are more about Kim's wife who objected to the high profile of her husband's former girlfriend". That would have constituted a fairly lethal objection, one with morbid consequences for an unfortunate dozen people.

In a country whose leader values life to such an abysmally low degree that the starvation of millions of North Koreans in exchange for using state treasury to advance nuclear weapons takes precedence over human survival of the unfittest, their mass death due to starvation constitutes an acceptable trade-off.