SEOUL, April 4 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has executed a former cabinet minister in charge of railways over the deadly explosion of a train station near the border with China in 2004, an official in Seoul said Monday, the latest reported execution of a senior North Korean official.

   The government official confirmed the execution of former Railways Minister Kim Yong-sam, noting it was apparently related to the explosion of Ryongchon Station in the North's rural northwestern area.

   The official asked not to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity and did not give a time frame of Kim's death and other details.

   The blast occurred several hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il passed through the station after a surprise trip from China, fueling speculation that the incident may have been an assassination attempt on Kim by his opponents.

   The North announced that highly explosive ammonium nitrate fertilizer being shunted at the station had hit an electric cable in an accident, triggering the explosion that killed some 160 people and injured 1,300 others.

   Kim Yong-sam, who had been in charge of railway affairs since 1998, last appeared in a report by the North's official Korean Central News Agency in 2008.

   The news of the former railway chief's execution came more than a year after North Korea reportedly executed Pak Nam-gi, former chief of the planning and finance department of the ruling Workers' Party, over Pyongyang's botched currency reform in 2009 that caused massive inflation and worsened food shortages.

   Sources in South Korea said there is also a possibility that former Finance Minister Mun Il-bong was executed over the failed currency reform.

   It is not unusual for North Korea to execute senior officials for policy failures. In the 1990s, North Korea executed a top agricultural official over a massive famine that was estimated to have killed 2 million people.

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