North Korea has executed a ruling party official blamed for a botched currency reform, in a desperate attempt to quell public unrest and stem negative impact on Pyongyang, a news report said yesterday.

The execution by firing squad in Pyongyang last week of Pak Nam-ki, Labour Party chief for planned economy, was for the crime of "a son of a bourgeois conspiring to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionaries to destroy the national economy," South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting sources.

The unrest, triggered by sharp price increases in the marketplace amid confusion caused by the late November currency revaluation, forced the North to take some steps to roll back its effect.

North Korea is reeling under the loss of international aid and under United Nations sanctions imposed last year for a nuclear test, and has indicated it might return to nuclear disarmament talks.

The North's abrupt currency move was aimed at cutting into the power of a burgeoning merchant class. But it destabilized the North's currency and sparked rare social unrest.