SEOUL (AFP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un slammed his Cabinet’s “irresponsible” handling of flooding, blaming them for recent storm damage in the isolated country, state media reported yesterday.
Tropical Storm Khanun made landfall earlier this month in the North, a country where natural disasters can be devastating due to weak infrastructure and widespread deforestation.
A damaged embankment and inadequate drainage system resulted in seawater flooding more than 560 hectares of land, including key rice paddies, according to state media.
Images in state media showed Kim standing knee-deep in a flooded paddy field in the area in Nampho, with a report in the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) saying he “seriously blamed” top officials for their “very irresponsible neglect of duties”.
Kim said the recent damage was “not a calamity caused by natural disasters but a human disaster by irresponsibility … of the loafers,” KCNA said.
The leader particularly singled out Premier Kim Tok Hun for failing to prevent the damage.
“The premier looked round the site once or twice with the attitude of an onlooker,” the report said.
In recent years, KCNA added, “the administrative and economic discipline of the Kim Tok Hun Cabinet has got out of order more seriously”, and that they were “spoiling all the state economic work”.
