North Korean leader Kim Jong-un accused senior officials in his country of “defeatism”, blaming them for the dire state of the country’s economy, the official KCNA news agency said on Friday.
At a senior executives conference, Kim “severely criticized” economic planners in various sectors, saying they had failed to implement “the ideas and policies” announced in January at a conference. ruling party congress, according to KCNA.
The congress, the first of its kind in five years and the eighth in North Korean history, produced a new plan for the economy.
But he also revealed the extent of the financial distress of this very isolated country. Kim has apologized several times for mistakes in economic planning and said the past five years have been the “worst”.
At the end of the four-day conference on Friday, Kim blasted his executives’ lack of “innovative perspective and clear tactics” in the face of the situation.
He cited as an example agriculture, whose officials have set production targets “without taking into account the current situation, where operating conditions are unfavorable and the state is unable to provide enough material”.
Other sectors have been criticized for their “absurdly low” production quotas, with officials accused of being incompetent and “pretending to do their job”.
North Korea faces multiple international sanctions because of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, which made rapid progress under Mr. Kim’s reign.
His summit meeting with US President Donald Trump in February 2019 in Hanoi had been a failure.
Nuclear talks have since stalled. North Korea displayed several new missiles in military parades in October and last month, and Kim has said he wants to boost its nuclear arsenal.
Pyongyang is also under increasing financial pressure, as the coronavirus pandemic and flooding last summer took a heavy toll on its already battered economy.