What's Happening In North Korea

Several high ranking generals have been executed. A course change or just instilling fear?

As soon as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un became vice chairman of the Workers Party's powerful Central Military Commission there emerged signs of a sweeping purge. Around a dozen high-ranking officers, including an assistant chief of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces, an assistant chief of the General Staff Department as well as frontline commanders were brutally executed, ostensibly for being drunk or for sexual harassment during the mourning period for dead leader Kim Jong-il.

But what does the purge mean, and what is exactly is going on in the North Korean Army, which has sometimes been described as a state within the state?