Kim Jong-un Blasts Delays In North Korean Economic Projects

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has launched an unusual barrage of criticism at officials over delays in completing economic projects.

The country’s leaders usually praise officials during factory visits.

But this time state media said he was “speechless” a power plant was only 70% complete and “appalled” by hot-spring bathtubs “dirtier than fish tanks”.

Pyongyang has long pushed for economic progress as the secondary aim alongside developing nuclear arms.

Mr Kim’s latest inspection tour took him to four sites in North Hamgyong province, bordering China.

At Orangchon power station, he complained that only 70% of the facility had been completed, 17 years after construction began.

At a hotel in the city of Yombunjin, he noted that six years into the construction project, plastering was still not finished.

Visiting the Onpho holiday resort, he pointed out bathtubs that were “dirty, gloomy and unsanitary”, state-run KCNA news agency reported.

After visiting a bag factory, he said the provincial party committee was “working in a perfunctory manner”.

North Korea’s domestic newspaper Rodong Sinmun devoted a whole nine pages to the story.

“Normally such things are not done in the open press which, in the overwhelming majority of cases, maintains the image of the DPRK [North Korea] as a perfect country,” analyst Fyodor Tertitskiy of NK News told the BBC.

Source: BBC