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The U.S. daily Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday a video tape of public executions in North Korea in early March was broadcast all around the world but is being kept off the air in South Korea. The paper said this was due to indirect pressure from the Korean government and was raising fresh questions about Seoul's softly-softly approach to Pyongyang.
Quoting a North Korean defector, the daily said the people who brought the tape through China went to Korea's KBS to have it aired but were refused by the station. "We have told of many public executions [in the North]. But officials in Seoul always ask us for material evidence," the defector told the paper. "Now that we have evidence, they don't want to see it."
The paper reported a discrepancy in South Korean intelligence reactions to the tape. It said officers "have told Western reporters the tape is far too detailed to be a fake. Yet officially the tape's authenticity is 'still under investigation.'" The tape was broadcast by Japan's N-TV on March 16. It included footage of two individuals being executed by firing squad before a crowd in the North Korean border city of Hoeryong on March 1, and one individual on March 2 on charges of human trafficking. It also showed 11 individuals being publicly sentenced.
The execution scenes from the tape have been re-edited into a three-minute video subtitled in English and circulated among human rights groups around the world.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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