North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rebuked “irresponsible” officials for failing to prevent damage from a tropical storm that swept across the Korean peninsula last week, state media reported Monday.
Tropical Storm Khanun, which battered Japan before taking a circuitous route toward the Korean peninsula, moved across North Korea early Friday, bringing heavy rains to the south.
Natural disasters tend to hit the isolated and impoverished north heavier due to its poor infrastructure, while deforestation has left it vulnerable to flooding.
Visiting flooded farms in Anbyeon County in the east of the country, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the area has suffered more damage than other areas “due to the chronic and irresponsible work behavior” of local officials.
The report quoted Kim as saying that “the district officials were not affected by the state’s measures and did not take any action, and as a result the district suffered more damage than other areas.”
As the storm approached the peninsula, the North implemented a “dynamic campaign to deal with catastrophic abnormal climate” and called for measures to minimize damage to the country’s economic output.
The North periodically suffered from famine, with hundreds of thousands of people dying—estimates range into the millions—in the mid-1990s.
The country held a high-level party meeting in February to specifically address food shortages and agricultural problems.
u/mtp
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