North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s latest appearance, in which he dressed down officials building a showcase hospital, illustrates why the he cannot afford to languish under sanctions forever if he wants to fix his economy.
In a visit to the Pyongyang General Hospital, Kim lashed out at the building committee over “serious problems in economic organization for the construction,” Korean Central News Agency said yesterday.
Kim “rebuked” the committee for not following ruling party policies and accused it of “careless” budgeting.
The field inspection comes less than three months before the 75th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea on Oct. 10, which Kim in March had chosen as a symbolic completion date.
The project appears to have been hit by a shortage of building materials, underscoring the difficulty he faces to improve living conditions while toiling under a US-led sanctions campaign to curb his nuclear program.
“There’s simply nothing more he can do but to scold officials, or people would start questioning Kim’s legitimacy to deliver people’s needs,” said Cha Du-hyeogn, a visiting research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
North Korea’s economy might shrink 6 percent this year, Fitch Solutions said, which would be its worst plunge since a historic famine more than two decades ago.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted North Korea to shut its borders in January, had exacerbated the problem.
More than two years after a flurry of summits with US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Kim still has not achieved the sanctions relief he wanted in exchange for offers to scale back his nuclear weapons program.
Besides curbing North Korean imports of metals, machinery and petroleum products, the sanctions also restrict his access to foreign currency.
Sanctions have made it difficult to get medical equipment to the Pyongyang General Hospital site, the NK News Web site reported last month. Kim has dedicated two of his two dozen publicly announced trips this year visit to the twin-towered facility, which covers an area of 60,000m2.
Kim’s other major construction project — the Wonsan-Kalma tourism zone on the east coast that includes more than 100 buildings, an airfield and a sports stadium — has made major progress over the past nine years, but remains unfinished, apparently hit by a shortage of building materials, the 38 North Web site reported in April, based on analysis of satellite images.
Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former US government analyst specializing in North Korea, said Kim’s attention to the project appeared intended to demonstrate that he’s a pragmatic and hands-on leader.
“North Korea likely needed to launch a feasible economic project — smaller scale, but nevertheless symbolic,” Lee said. “Kim Jong-un clearly thought building a hospital in the nation’s capital met those conditions.”
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