North Korea's Kim blasts 'irresponsible' top officials for flood damage

According to state media on Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chastised senior officials for their “irresponsible” response to flood damage and claimed that this had “spoiled” the country’s economy.

After seawater recently demolished an embankment with a poor drainage system, flooding more than 560 hectares of land, including more than 270 hectares of rice paddies, Kim examined a tideland on the west coast on Monday, according to news agency KCNA.

Kim singled out Kim Tok Hun, the premier of the government, for visiting the wrecked site a couple of times “with the attitude of an onlooker” while reprimanding officials for their “very irresponsible” disregard of their responsibilities.

“He said … in recent years the administrative and economic discipline of the Kim Tok Hun Cabinet has got out of order more seriously and, consequently, the idlers are spoiling all the state economic work with the irresponsible work manner,” the KCNA said in an English-language dispatch.

It is “mainly attributable to the feeble work attitude and incorrect viewpoint of the premier of the cabinet,” Kim stated, that such carelessness and a lack of discipline among officials.

In light of growing worries about a food crisis in the isolated nation, the North Korean leader has visited flood-affected farmlands on numerous occasions, the most recent of which was this past week.

Kim’s severe criticism may signal a cabinet upheaval, according to Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University in South Korea. According to Lim, it also shows that the economy is not progressing as expected.

“After all, Kim appears to be furious over the national economy not improving as much as he wants,” Lim said.

In recent decades, the North has experienced severe food shortages, including famine in the 1990s, frequently as a result of natural disasters. International experts have cautioned that the situation was made worse by border closures during the COVID-19 epidemic.

(With agency inputs)