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SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toured areas hit by a typhoon on Saturday, replaced the chairman of a local party provincial committee and ordered Pyongyang officials to lead a recovery effort, state media reported. on Sunday.
Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA) said that more than 1,000 houses were destroyed along the coastal areas of Hamgyong’s southern and northern provinces and that “not a few public buildings and farmland were flooded.”
Kim led an expanded executive policy committee meeting on recovery efforts in the typhoon-affected areas, focusing on detailed measures such as organizing construction crews to be dispatched to the areas, designs and transportation of materials, KCNA said.
At the meeting, he also removed the chairman of the South Hamyong provincial party committee and appointed a new chairman.
North Korea’s ruling party has called for the punishment of officials whose failure to follow orders caused “dozens of casualties” during the typhoons, the country’s official party newspaper reported on Saturday.
Separately, Kim sent an open letter to party members in the capital noting that this year has seen “rare difficulties due to the prolonged global public health crisis” and natural disasters. He added that the Central Party Committee decided to send 12,000 party members from Pyongyang to the typhoon-affected areas to help communities recover.
The isolated country has been dealing with torrential rains, floods and typhoons in one of the wettest rainy seasons on record.
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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