Politics this week

North Korea declared that it had launched a satellite into space, violating UN sanctions. The launch is likely to have been a cover for testing a long-range ballistic missile. Days later reports surfaced that the army chief of staff, Ri Yong Gil, had been executed. He was one of several bigwigs to have been purged recently by the dictator, Kim Jong Un. Meanwhile, South Korea, displeased at the launch and at an earlier underground nuclear test, shut the industrial park at Kaesong that it operates with North Korea. See article.