North Korean leader Kim Jong Un fired a vice-premier for incompetence, criticising officials for delays at a key industrial complex.
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fired a senior official responsible for economic policy and condemned incompetent bureaucrats.
State media reported on Tuesday that Kim dismissed Vice-Premier of the Cabinet Yang Sung Ho “on the spot” during a tour of a newly opened industrial machinery complex.
Kim blamed officials for causing delays in the project’s first-stage modernisation.
“Owing to the irresponsible, rude and incompetent economic guidance officials, the first-stage modernization project of the Ryongsong Machine Complex encountered difficulties,” Kim said.
He criticised cadres who had for “too long been accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness”.
The leader stated Yang was “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties”.
“Put simply, it was like hitching a cart to a goat — an accidental mistake in our cadre appointment process,” Kim explained.
“After all, it is an ox that pulls a cart, not a goat.”
He further warned that current economic policymakers could “hardly guide the work of readjusting the country’s industry as a whole and upgrading it technologically”.
The move comes as Pyongyang prepares for its first ruling party congress in five years, expected in the coming weeks.
Last month, Kim vowed to root out “evil” and scolded lazy officials at a major meeting of the country’s top brass.
State media said the ruling party had revealed numerous recent “deviations” in discipline, a common euphemism for corruption.