SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un fired a senior official tasked with economic policy and condemned “incompetent” apparatchiks, state media said Tuesday (Jan 20).
Touring the opening of an industrial machinery complex, Kim blasted officials whom he blamed for delays in the project, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
“Owing to the irresponsible, rude and incompetent economic guidance officials, the first-stage modernisation project of the Ryongsong Machine Complex encountered difficulties,” Kim said.
And he slammed cadres who for “too long been accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness”.
He fired vice-premier of the Cabinet Yang Sung Ho “on the spot”, KCNA said.
Yang was “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties”, Kim said,
“Put simply, it was like hitching a cart to a goat – an accidental mistake in our cadre appointment process,” the North Korean leader explained.
“After all, it is an ox that pulls a cart, not a goat.”
And he warned that current economic policymakers could “hardly guide the work of readjusting the country’s industry as a whole and upgrading it technologically”.
Pyongyang is gearing up for its first congress of its ruling party in five years, with analysts expecting it in the coming weeks.
Last month, Kim vowed to root out “evil” and scolded lazy officials at a major meeting of Pyongyang’s top brass.
State media did not offer specifics, though it did say the ruling party had revealed numerous recent “deviations” in discipline – a euphemism for corruption.
Source: CNA
