North Korea’s Kim sacks vice-premier, rails against ‘incompetence’

SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fired his vice-premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media said on Jan 20, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory.

Vice-Premier Yang Sung Ho was sacked “on the spot”, state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, in a speech in which Mr 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,” Mr Kim reportedly said.

“He is ineligible for an important duty.

“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.”

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.

Mr Kim has been quick to scold lazy officials for alleged mismanagement of economic policy, but such a public dismissal is very rare.

Touring the opening of an industrial machinery complex on Jan 19, Mr Kim blasted cadres who for “too long been accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness”.

Mr Yang was “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties”, Mr Kim said, according to KCNA.

Mr Kim urged a quick turnaround in the “centuries-old backwardness of the economy”, and to “build a modernised and advanced one capable of firmly guaranteeing the future of our state”.

Images released by Pyongyang showed a stern-looking Mr Kim delivering a speech at the venue in South Hamgyong province in the country’s frigid north-east, with workers in attendance wearing green uniforms and matching grey hats.

Lazy officials

The impoverished North has long prioritised its military and banned nuclear weapons programmes over providing for its people.

It is highly vulnerable to natural disasters including flood and drought due to a chronic lack of infrastructure, deforestation and decades of state mismanagement.

The new machine complex makes up part of a large machinery-manufacturing belt linking the north-east to Wonsan further south, “accounting for about 16 per cent of North Korea’s total machinery output”, according to Prof Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies.

Mr Kim’s public dismissal of Mr Yang mirrors past cases such as Mr Jang Song Thaek, Mr Kim’s uncle, who was executed in 2013 after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew, Prof Yang said.

The North Korean leader is “using public accountability as a shock tactic to warn party officials”, he told AFP.

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, is likely to be high on the agenda.

In December, Mr 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. AFP