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Kim condemns ‘incompetent’ party members for delays in government projects ahead of key ruling party meeting.
Published on January 20, 2026
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Jong U fired a top economic policy official and condemned “incompetent” party members, according to state media, in a rare public rebuke of officials in the secretive state.
The official Korean News Agency (KCNA) reported on Tuesday that Kim dismissed Vice Prime Minister Yang Sung-ho during the groundbreaking ceremony for the first stage of a project to modernize the Ryongsong machinery complex.
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The North Korean leader fired Yang “on the spot,” KCNA said, adding that Kim considered the vice prime minister “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties.”
“Simply put, it was like attaching a cart to a goat – an accidental mistake in our executive appointment process,” Kim said in the report. “After all, it’s an ox that pulls a cart, not a goat,” he added.
Yang, a former minister of machinery industry who was promoted to vice premier in charge of the machinery sector, is also an alternate member of the party’s leadership council, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
Yang’s replacement has not been announced.
The removal comes as North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party prepares to hold its ninth congress, which is expected to meet soon to outline the country’s main policy goals.
While touring the industrial machinery complex on Monday, Kim also lambasted officials he blamed for delays in the modernization project.
“Due to irresponsible, rude and incompetent economic guidance officials, the Ryongsong Machinery Complex’s first stage modernization project has encountered difficulties,” Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.
He also castigated party members who, for “too long”, had been “accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passivity”.
Kim warned that current economic policymakers could “difficultly guide the work of readjusting the country’s overall industry and technological upgrading.”
The officials’ public reprimands, which Yonhap called “rare,” appeared aimed at strengthening discipline among officials ahead of the Party congress.
Last week, Yonhap reported that North Korea had replaced its top military officials charged with guarding Kim, amid what it called “assassination concerns.”
According to the report, the heads of three main North Korean units, the ruling party’s Guard Bureau, the Guard Department of the State Affairs Commission and the Bodyguard Command, have all been replaced.
Although rare, public dismissals mirror past cases, such as that of Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed in 2013 after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew, according to Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies.
The North Korean leader is “using public accountability as a shock tactic to warn party officials,” Yang told the AFP news agency.
