SEOUL - North Korea has executed a top financial official blamed for a bungled currency revaluation that triggered chaos in the communist state, South Korean news reports said Thursday.

Pak Nam-Ki, who was earlier reported sacked as chief of the communist party's planning and finance department, was shot dead last week at a military range in Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency said.

Pak, 77, was charged with ruining the national economy as a "son of a big landowner", Yonhap said, quoting sources familiar with events in the North.

The news agency said many North Koreans believe he was made a scapegoat for the revaluation, which fuelled inflation and worsened serious food shortages.

Munhwa Ilbo newspaper carried a similar story. South Korea's unification ministry and the National Intelligence Service could not confirm the reports.