North Korea offers rare apology over collapse of apartment building

An unknown number of people died when a building under construction collapsed in Pyongyang

theguardian.com, Reuters, Seoul, Sunday 18 May 2014

A construction division officer apologises to residents, in a picture
 released by North Korea's official news agency KCNA. Photograph:
KNS/AFP/Getty Images

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.

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 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 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.

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.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said "hundreds" were presumed to be dead.

The KCNA statement said North Korean authorities put emergency measures into place to rescue people from the collapsed building and to treat the injured.

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".

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.

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