Seoul, Aug 7 (EFE).- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over a ceremony in Pyongyang to honor and bid farewell to some 300,000 young volunteers who will participate in a campaign to help flooded areas in the country’s northwest, state media reported Wednesday.
Kim himself appointed the Paektusan Youth Heroes Shock Brigade to carry out these reconstruction tasks during the Tuesday event, according to details by the state agency KCNA.
The KCNA report said that «in less than a week, nearly 300,000 young people have volunteered to go to areas that need to recover from flood damage.»
The city of Sinuiju and the neighboring county of Uiju have been severely affected by the flooding of the Amnok River due to heavy monsoon rains, which has inundated some 4,000 homes and some 3,000 hectares of arable land and forced the evacuation of at least 5,000 people, according to North Korean media.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, in charge of relations with Pyongyang, has said that this North Korean region may have suffered a «considerable» number of deaths due to the floods, although it has not offered an estimate.
At Tuesday’s ceremony in front of Pyongyang’s April 25 House of Culture, Kim gave a speech to encourage the volunteers, while representatives of the youth brigade exhorted the North Korean marshal’s leadership.
Kim said in his speech that «such enthusiastic and ardent volunteerism can never be found in other countries and he would like to proudly tell the world that our country has such young people.»
KCNA likened the young people to «the defenders of the country who voluntarily went to the front in the 1950s with ardent patriotism,» referring to the Korean War, and described the brigade’s mission as «a gigantic revolutionary construction campaign that will give a complete facelift to part of our territory.»
Although Pyongyang called the situation an «emergency,» it has rejected humanitarian aid offered by Seoul – unsurprising after the country declared South Korea its «main enemy» at the beginning of the year – and also by Moscow, with whom it is rebuilding ties.
China has not publicly offered help to North Korea, which shares the Amnok River basin and divides the two countries. Both states are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the establishment of relations this year, which suggests bilateral ties may be suffering due to the rapprochement between Pyongyang and Russia. EFE
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