Special to WorldTribune.com

By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com

SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is closing in on his goal of eliminating the network of his late uncle and associates by the April 15 birthday of his grandfather Kim Il-Sung, sources and media reports here said.

The North’s once powerful Administration Department of the Workers’ Party headed by Kim’s uncle Jang Song-Thaek has been completely shut down, according to South Korea’s largest newspaper Chosun Ilbo.

All 11 deputy heads of the department were executed or sent to concentration camps for their close ties with Jang who was executed in December on charges of treason and corruption, Chosun said, citing a source familiar with the North. “One of them was burned alive,” the April 7 report said. …

Meanwhile, Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper said on April 7 that the North has expanded gulags to incarcerate relatives and associates of Jang, numbering 1,200. Work is underway to expand concentration camp No. 16 in Hwasong, No. 25 in Chongjin and No. 18 in Bukchang, among others, it said.

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  Jang Song-Thaek, Kim Jong-Un, The purge that has filled N. Korean gulags and the nation-wide power base that triggered it