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North Korea offers rare apology over fatal apartment building collapse North Korea offers rare apology over fatal apartment building collapse
(about 2 hours later)
North Korea has apologised to bereaved families after an apartment building collapsed in Pyongyang last week, the official KCNA news agency said, a rare admission of fallibility from the reclusive state. It is unknown how many died in the accident. North Korean officials have offered a rare public apology for the collapse of an apartment building under construction in Pyongyang, which a South Korean official said might have killed hundreds of people.
Pyongyang's expression of "profound consolation and apology" was the first official news of the disaster, which happened in the Phyongchon district of the North Korean capital on Tuesday. The news of the collapse in the secretive country’s capital was reported on Sunday morning by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which gave no death toll but said the accident was “serious” and had upset North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
"The construction of an apartment house was not done properly and officials supervised and controlled it in an irresponsible manner," said the statement from KCNA, which is better known for its strident attacks on South Korea and the United States. The report said it had occurred in the capital’s Phyongchon district on Tuesday “as the construction of an apartment house was not done properly and officials supervised and controlled it in an irresponsible manner”.
The KCNA statement said the collapse of the apartment building "claimed casualties" but did not give any indication of how many may have been killed or injured. It said a rescue operation ended on Saturday. In Seoul, a South Korean government official speaking on condition of anonymity said the 23-storey apartment building that collapsed was presumed to have housed 92 families.
An official from South Korea's unification ministry said on Sunday that a 23-storey apartment building had collapsed in Pyongyang on Tuesday, but he would not say from where the information had been obtained. That could mean the casualties could be in the hundreds, because a typical North Korean family has four members. However, it was not clear that all the residents were inside at the time of the collapse, or that four people lived in each apartment.
The official, who asked not to be identified, said "hundreds" were presumed to be dead. It is not unusual for people to start living in apartments before the construction is complete.
The KCNA statement said North Korean authorities put emergency measures into place to rescue people from the collapsed building and to treat the injured. The official said he did not have any figure for the actual death toll.According to the KCNA report, the rescue operation ended on Saturday and officials apologised to bereaved families and district residents.
It said Choe Pu-il, North Korea's minister of people's security, had "repented", saying he had failed to supervise the project adequately, "thereby causing an unimaginable accident". On the streets of Pyongyang on Sunday, residents expressed outrage over the incident.
The North had launched vitriolic criticism of South Korea's government for its handling of the ferry disaster that killed more than 300 people, many of them schoolchildren, last month. “This accident happened because they broke the rules and methods of construction,” Pak Chol said. “After this accident, we must make sure that this kind of terrible accident never happens again, by sticking to the proper method of building.”
Another resident, Hong Nam Hyok, said: “Everyone in Pyongyang is now sharing the sorrow of the victims and the bereaved families.”
The KCNA report cited one official as saying Kim Jong-un had “sat up all night, feeling painful after being told about the accident”.
North Korea’s highly controlled state media rarely report news that might be considered negative, and an admission of fault by the government is unusual.
The country regularly blames South Korea for starting the 1950-53 Korean war, although outside historians say the North attacked first. North Korea also denies responsibility for an attack on a South Korean warship that killed 46 people in 2010, despite a South-Korean-led international investigation that blamed a Pyongyang torpedo.
Sometimes, however, the country owns up to failures. Many were surprised when the North admitted in 2012 that a high-profile rocket launch had fizzled soon after takeoff. Pyongyang had previously claimed success after other launches that foreign governments said had been failures.
The building collapse came as the South Korean government receives near-daily criticism from its citizens as well as regular bashing by North Korean media for its handling of last month’s ferry sinking that left more than 300 people dead or missing.