The apparent right-hand man of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who a report last week said may have been purged and sent to a labor and re-education camp, has appeared alongside Kim during a musical performance, state-run media said in a dispatch Monday.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim Yong Chol, who serves as a vice chairman of the powerful Central Committee of the country's ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), attended the performance Sunday with the country's leader and several other top officials. It was not clear if Kim Yong Chol, a former spymaster, had earlier been sent to a camp and later released.
A report Friday in South Korea's conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper had claimed, citing an unnamed source, that Kim Yong Chol had been sent to a labor and re-education camp in remote Jagang province and that top North Korean nuclear envoy, Kim Hyok Chol, and four other high-level officials had been executed by firing squad.
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