CNN news 2015-05-17 加文本

cnn news 2015-05-17

Hi, I'm Carl Azuz. First up this Thursday on cnn Student News: a tragic incident on the busiest railroad in North America, Amtrak's Northeast Corridor connects Washington D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts. 

On Tuesday night, train number 188 was carrying 238 commuters and five crew members from the capital to New York. When it got near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the train derailed. One witness said there's a place where the track curves around a warehouse, and then it looked like the engine kept going straight, off the track, followed by the cars it was pulling, seven of them came off the track. At least seven people were killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. It says its preliminary data shows the train was traveling at 100 miles per hour at the time it derailed. That's twice the speed limit on that section of the track. Passengers were thrown from their seats against walls, doors, each other. More than 200 people were injured, several of them thanked first responders who arrived within minutes to rescue victims.

Next, what's being called "fear politics" in North Korea. The communist country's defense minister was publicly executed within the past few weeks. That's according to a South Korean spy agency. 

Hyon Yong Chol had been accused of treason. He'd reportedly disobeyed the orders of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. South Korean officials say Hyon was not given a trial, that he was killed two to three days after he was arrested. 

North Korea's dictator has been accused of executing as many as 15 top officials this year. A North Korean government official called that, quote, "malicious slander", but he did not deny that executions happen in North Korea for crimes of treason and subversion, undermining the government.

A son grieves for his father, then executes his closest aides. Within two years of taking power, five of the seven men you see here with Kim Jong-un were either fired or killed. 

According to this man, the highest level North Korean official to defect in years, that was just the beginning. We're hiding his identity and calling him "Mr. Park" to protect friends and families still in Pyongyang. 

In his first-ever interview, he tells cnn, Kim Jong-un's cruelty is turning the elite against him.

"Within three months of taking power," he says, "Kim Jong-un had ruthlessly executed seven of his father's closest aides and three generations of their families, including the children. That was the beginning of his reign of terror."

Park worked closely with his father, former leader Kim Jong-il, himself considered by much of the world as a brutal dictator. But he says while the father imprisoned his enemies, the son simply executes them.

"Hundreds," says Park. "They may tremble in fear of him, but their loyalty is fake. They don't consider him human. His cruelty angers and shocks them."

One reason he believes Kim Jong-un will lose power within three years. Another reason, he says, increasing questions of legitimacy. Many believe Kim Jong-un's mother was born in Japan, an historical enemy of the Kim dynasty, which obsesses over a pure legal bloodline. While Kim has highlighted his physical similarities to his grandfather and founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, Park doubts they ever even met. 

There's not a single photo of Kim Jong-un and Kim Il-sung taken together, he says. That is why people suspect Kim Il-sung didn't even recognize him.

Park speaks of little electricity or running water outside the capital Pyongyang, evidence of which I saw while in North Korea in 2013, but he also claims the country is running out of money. He says he worked closely with Kim Jong-un's finances, plans for a Chinese style open market soon dropped when it became clear Kim Jong-un's reign could be in jeopardy.

Kim Jong-un has lost the confidence of the elite, says Park, as he appears powerless to improve either the economy or foreign policy. Instead he appears to be focusing on areas he thinks he cannot fail, nuclear and military. Paula Hancocks, cnn, Seoul.