North Korean chief Kim Jong-un has reportedly ordered the execution of 20 to 30 officers over their alleged failure to stop extreme flooding and landslides final summer time that killed an estimated 4,000 folks, South Korean media reported.
TV Chosun reported that the officers had been accused of corruption and dereliction of obligation, resulting in their execution. “It has been decided that 20 to 30 officers from the flood-hit space had been executed on the similar time late final month,” a Kim regime official advised the outlet.
Reviews of those executions have but to be independently verified. Nonetheless, North Korea’s Korean Central Information Company had beforehand reported that Kim ordered authorities to “severely punish” officers following catastrophic flooding in Chagang province in July, which additionally displaced greater than 15,000 folks, The New York Occasions reported.
Though the executed officers weren’t recognized, the report talked about that Kang Bong-hoon, who had served as secretary of the Chagang Provincial Occasion Committee since 2019, was amongst these fired by Kim throughout an emergency assembly held in the course of the catastrophe.
Following the assembly, former North Korean diplomat Lee Il-gyu advised TV Chosun that officers within the province had been “so anxious that they don’t know when their necks will fall off.”
Final month, Kim was seen inspecting broken areas and interacting with residents, estimating that it will take months to rebuild devastated neighborhoods. He additionally refuted South Korean studies on the loss of life toll, denying that hundreds had perished.
This isn’t the primary time Kim has ordered executions for alleged failures. In 2019, there have been studies that Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s nuclear envoy to the US, was executed for failing to dealer a summit between Kim and then-US President Donald Trump. Nonetheless, it was later revealed that Chol was merely in state custody.
North Korea has a historical past of public executions: Earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, a median of 10 executions had been carried out per yr, in keeping with the Korea Occasions. The outlet estimates that the quantity elevated final yr, with at the least 100 recorded executions.
