North Korea’s Kim Purges Vice Premier, Slams ‘Incompetent’ Officials

By Staff, Agencies

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has dismissed his vice premier and publicly denounced “incompetent” officials during the opening of a key factory, state media reported Tuesday.

Vice Premier Yang Sung Ho was sacked "on the spot", the state-run Korean Central News Agency [KCNA] said, in a speech in which Kim attacked "irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials".

"Please, Comrade Vice Premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late," Kim reportedly said.

Nuclear-armed North Korea, which is under multiple sets of sanctions over its weapons programmes, has long struggled with its moribund state-managed economy and chronic food shortages.

Kim publicly dismissed officials for mismanagement and blasted cadres for “defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness” during Monday’s industrial complex opening, a rare public rebuke.

Yang was "unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties", Kim said, according to KCNA.

"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 urged a quick turnaround in the "centuries-old backwardness of the economy and build a modernized and advanced one capable of firmly guaranteeing the future of our state".

Images released by Pyongyang showed a stern-looking Kim delivering a speech at the venue in Hamgyong Province in the country's frigid northeast, with workers in attendance wearing green uniforms and matching grey hats.

North Korea, long prioritizing its military over its people and vulnerable to disasters due to poor infrastructure, opened a new machinery complex producing 16% of the country’s output, linking the northeast to Wonsan.

Kim’s public dismissal of Yang echoes past purges like that of his uncle Jang Song Thaek in 2013, using visible accountability as a shock tactic to warn officials, experts say.

Pyongyang is gearing up for its first congress of its ruling party in five years, with analysts expecting it in the coming weeks.

Economic policy, as well as defence and military planning, are likely to be high on the agenda.

Last month, Kim vowed to root out "evil" 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.