Kim Jong Un may or may not have executed one of the negotiators of the whatever that is between the US and North Korea.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that the US is looking into reports that North Korea executed a top official after President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, earlier this year.

South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported that Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s special envoy to the US, was executed after Kim Jong Un and Trump were unable to reach an agreement at their second summit in February.

CNN also tried to verify the reports and was unable to.

The [South Korean] paper — quoting unnamed North Korean sources — said Kim Hyok Chol was executed in March at the Mirim airport in Pyongyang on charges of “being recruited by US imperialists and betraying the supreme leader.”

Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s State Affairs Commission special representative, led negotiations with the US special representative to North Korea, Stephen Biegun, at the Hanoi summit and was in charge of the working-level talks with American counterparts.

He’s definitely out of sight, but sometimes North Koreans who go out of sight later reappear, having been *cough* re-educated. Four legs good, two legs bad.

“There’s certainly plenty of evidence — both in Kim’s recent past, and North Korean history — of purging officials when things don’t work out the way that the leader needs, or when there are potentially concerns about different factions within the government and the elite,” according to Lindsey Ford of the Asia Society Policy Institute, who is also a former Pentagon adviser for Asian and Pacific Security.

“Trump can talk about how he and Kim are on the same page … because they are buds, but (Kim) is a dictator who, in the past, has executed people close to him: his brother, his uncle — and he’s not afraid to do it again,” Ford added.

Let’s be real: that’s why Trump likes him. Trump probably envies him the ability to execute anyone he takes a dislike to, including relatives.