I suppose this is one way to ensure accountability.
North Korean leading psychopath, Kim Jong-Un, has executed "up to 30" government officials he deems responsible for massive flooding that killed at least 4,000 people, according to South Korean media.
The officials had been charged with "corruption" and "dereliction of duty." They were sentenced to death, TV Chosun reported.
“It has been determined that 20 to 30 cadres in the flood-stricken area were executed at the same time late last month,” the official told the outlet.
Some reports indicated that the officials were executed by decapitation. Having your head cut off seems a lot less brutal than being strapped to the muzzle of an anti-aircraft gun and blown to smithereens. That's how Kim dispatched his former defense chief and several individuals who allegedly plotted a coup against him. He also threw his own uncle into a pit of ravenous dogs as a means of execution.
The executions appear to be designed to terrorize others. It probably works pretty well.
The North Korean Central News Agency previously reported that Kim ordered authorities “strictly punish” the officials after catastrophic flooding hit the Chagang Province in July, claiming about 4,000 lives and displacing more than 15,000 people.
The officials who were executed were not identified, but the report noted that Kang Bong-hoon, the Chagang Province Provincial Party Committee Secretary since 2019, was among the leaders dismissed by Kim in an emergency meeting during the flooding disaster.
Following the meeting with Kim, former North Korean diplomat Lee Il-gyu told TV Chosun that it was clear officials in the province were “so anxious that they don’t know when their necks will fall off.”
In a speech in July, Kim blamed officials for failing to take disaster prevention steps which caused "the casualty that cannot be allowed."
Corruption is endemic in North Korea. A joke whispered among citizens is that you can't cross the street without paying a bribe to a policeman. Kim may have discovered that disaster relief and preparedness funds had found their way into some of these officials' hands.
Meanwhile, North Korea continues to invent new ways to oppress its people. One of the most iconic images from the recently concluded Paris Olympics was the medal ceremony for mixed doubles ping pong that featured the bronze and silver medal teams from North and South Korea. Lim Jong-hoon and Shin Yu-bin and the North Korean pairing Kim Kum-yong and Ri Jong-sik stood on the medal platform and took selfies with each other.
Instead of proof that sports does, indeed, unite people, Kim took a far different point of view.
But this week media reports claimed that Kim and Ri had been placed under “ideological scrutiny”. The Daily NK, a North Korea-focused website based in Seoul, quoted a high-ranking source in Pyongyang as saying that athletes and members of the North Korean Olympic Committee had been undergoing a month-long “ideological scrubbing” since returning home in mid-August – reportedly standard procedure for sportsmen and women who have been exposed to life outside the communist state.
The website reported the country’s athletes had been instructed not to interact with fellow competitors from other countries, including the South, and were warned that “fraternisers” could face punishment.
The table tennis players were reportedly singled out for criticism in a report submitted to officials for “grinning” as they posed alongside athletes from a country the regime has described as its “number one enemy."
As I mentioned, executing people who irresponsibly caused a disaster is one way to hold public officials accountable for failure. In the case of COVID-19 and the million Americans who died, I'd settle for an honest congressional hearing where public officials confess their incompetence and stupidity and lose their jobs.
So far, that hasn't happened.
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