Kim sacks top official as Typhoon kills dozens in North Korea

Dozens of people have been killed by typhoon in North Korea and a top official has been sacked by the country’s leader Kim Jong-un, TopNaija reports.

Kim announced the sack as visited typhoon-stricken areas in the northeast. He promised to send 12,000 workers from Pyongyang for recovery efforts, state media reported Sunday.

While Kim surveyed the damage caused by a typhoon that battered coastal areas last week, a tenth typhoon of the season was swirling in the East China Sea.

Cargo ship with dozens of crew and almost 6,000 cattle feared capsized near Japan on September 4th, 2020. The Korean Central News Agency said that Kim on Saturday visited South Hamgyong province, which was hit by Typhoon Maysak last week.

It said Kim was briefed that the typhoon destroyed more than 1,000 houses and inundated public buildings and farmland in the coastal areas of South Hamgyong as well as nearby North Hamgyong province. KCNA didn’t report any deaths or injuries in the two provinces.

But the country’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said Saturday that “dozens of casualties” were reported in Kangwon province, south of the Hamgyong provinces.

It also reported that officials in Kangwon would be “gravely punished” for failing to evacuate residents to safety. Kim also convened a high-level policy meeting there, where he “underscored the need to make the recovery campaign from damage an important political work and an occasion of consolidating the single-mined unity,” KCNA said.

Kim said authorities must issue “a general mobilisation order” to ensure the swift supply of materials for rehabilitation works.

He urged members of the ruling Workers’ Party in Pyongyang, the capital, to take the lead.