Kim Jong-un has executed a senior North Korean official by firing squad because he did not sit properly during a meeting.
Education minister Kim Yong-Jin, 63, was shot dead after his 'bad sitting posture' in parliament incurred the wrath of the North Korean dictator.
The slouching vice premier was interrogated and found to be an 'anti-revolutionary agitator' before his execution in July, a South Korean official said.
'Vice premier for education Kim Yong-Jin was executed,' South Korea's unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said.
'Kim Yong-Jin was denounced for his bad sitting posture when he was sitting below the rostrum,' he added, referring to North Korea's parliament.
Kim Jong-un was in the government meeting and was infuriated after Kim Yong-Jin sat in his chair 'with a bad attitude'.
Another South Korean official said the education official's poor posture was spotted at a meeting on June 29, when Kim Jong-un was named chairman of a new national defence department.
The new report corrects claims made in the South Korean media yesterday that two North Korean officials were executed by anti-aircraft gun.
It was earlier reported that Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the education ministry, was sentenced to death after he fell asleep in a meeting being addressed by Kim Jong-un.
It was also falsely claimed that Hwang Min, an agriculture minister, was sentenced to death for undermining the North Korean leader for coming up with new farming ideas.
The North Korean regime is especially paranoid in recent weeks after a senior official at the London embassy defected to South Korea along with his wife and children.
North Korea rarely announces purges or executions, although state media confirmed the execution of Kim's uncle and the man widely considered the second most powerful man in the country, Jang Song Thaek, in 2012 for factionalism and crimes damaging to the economy.
A former defence minister, Hyun Yong Chol, is also believed to have been executed last year for treason, according to the South's spy agency.