North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has executed a string of top officials, in a desperate move to keep his grip on power after record-breaking floods in the country killed 4000 people and created 13,000 refugees.
Paranoid communist Kim blamed 30 officials for the natural disaster and had them all executed at the same time, Korean media has indicated. The July heavy rains that flooded the Yula River, which runs through their border with China, are said to have destroyed 3000 hectares of farmland and 5000 homes.
Thousands were killed in the deprived country from landslides and flooding, with last-minute planes being called in to rescue stranded citizens as panicked Kim called for help amid a “grave crisis” for his country. But with vast numbers of rural farmers still coming to terms with the devastating flood, Kim Jong-Un has reportedly killed the 30 officials in charge of responding to it.
In a country that has faced decades of famines, which have claimed the lives of more than 3.5 million North Koreans, the 40-year-old “supreme leader” has concerned himself with appearing to be on the frontline of the devastation. Rare pictures shared around the world show the portly dictator sitting on a rescue boat, while in others he can be seen staring at thousands of acres of ruined farms.
Pictures taken by agencies across the North Korea-China border show the entirety of Sinuiju city and Uiju county underwater, with many offering the worst for the inhabitants. The secretive regime has denied the wide reports of large-scale death after the floods as a “smear campaign to bring disgrace upon us and tarnish us.”
According to South Korean news outlet, Chosun TV, a North Korean official said: “Those who caused unacceptable casualties will be strictly punished.
“It has been determined that 20 to 30 key party individuals in the flood-stricken area were executed at the same time late last month.
“Circumstances involving the dismissed Chagang Province Party Secretary Kang Bong-hoon have been captured and are being confirmed.”
Like his father Kim Jong-Il, the younger Kim has shown a passion for murdering officials and family members alike since rising to power in 2011, after his father’s death. In a particularly ruthless move, Kim Jong-Un had his own uncle executed for treachery just a few years later, in a bid to strengthen his vice-like grip on the country.
In that ruthless act, Kim would also blame the problems of the state, in that case his family’s embezzlement of state assets and “decadent capitalist lifestyle”, on a man who could not refute the allegations, due to being murdered.
The floods have left vast swathes of farmland and rural North Korean villages completely unusable. This has given Kim Jong-Un’s communist government the perfect opportunity to tear down family homes in the country’s border region, with the claim that they will become “civilized.”
In August, Kim told a crowd of refugees that had fled to Pyongyang, saying: “This time, we are not going to confine ourselves to simply rebuilding the afflicted areas, but we will turn them into a model and textbook of regions becoming urbanized, modernized and civilized.”
