North Korea leader Kim Jong Un tours typhoon-hit area, directs recovery effort

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Saturday (Sep 5) toured areas hit by a typhoon, replaced an area provincial party committee chairman and ordered Pyongyang officials to lead a recovery effort, state media reported on Sunday.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said a lot more than 1,000 houses were destroyed along the coastline regions of South and North Hamgyong provinces and "not really a few public buildings and farmlands were inundated."

Kim led a an enlarged executive policy committee meeting on recovery efforts in the typhoon-hit areas, concentrating on detailed measures such as for example organization of creating crews to be dispatched to the areas, designs and material transport, KCNA said.

At the meeting, he also dismissed the chairman of the South Hamyong provincial party committee and appointed a new chairman.

North Korea's ruling party has needed punishment of officials whose failure to check out orders results in "dozens of casualties" during typhoons, the country's official party newspaper reported on Saturday.

Separately, Kim sent an open letter to party members in the administrative centre noting that year has witnessed "uncommon difficulties as a result of protracted worldwide public health crisis" and natural disasters. It added that the Party Central Committee decided to dispatch 12,000 party members from Pyongyang to the typhoon-hit areas to greatly help communities recover.

The isolated country has been grappling with torrential rains, floods and typhoons in another of the wettest rainy seasons on record.