Kim Jong-un slams North Korean warship launch accident as 'criminal act': state media

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: May 21, 2025 11:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

A superior mishap occurred connected Wednesday during the motorboat of a caller North Korean warship portion person Kim Jong-un was attending the event, and helium called it a "criminal act" that could not beryllium tolerated, authorities media KCNA reported.

Kim, who witnessed the failed motorboat of the more-than-4,500-tonne destroyer, said the incidental was caused by "carelessness" that tarnished the country's dignity, and ordered the vessel to beryllium restored earlier a cardinal ruling enactment gathering successful June, KCNA said connected Thursday.

The study did not notation whether determination were immoderate casualties.

KCNA said the incidental astatine the eastbound larboard of Chongjin was caused by a nonaccomplishment of equilibrium portion the vas was being launched and it said sections of the bottommost of the warship were crushed, but it did not springiness much details of harm sustained.

The study noted that Kim "made stern appraisal saying that it was a superior mishap and transgression enactment caused by implicit carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism which is retired of the bounds of anticipation and could not beryllium tolerated."

State's dignity brought 'to a collapse': Kim

Kim said the mishap "brought the dignity and self-respect of our authorities to a collapse." He said that an contiguous restoration of the destroyer was "not simply a applicable contented but a governmental contented straight related to the authorization of the state."

South Korea's subject said the stricken warship was sideways successful the h2o aft the failed launch.

Intelligence authorities in South Korea and the United States had been monitoring the activities successful advance, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung-jun told a briefing.

The uncommon nationalist disclosure of an mishap followed a study about the motorboat of different destroyer of a akin size successful April astatine the westbound seashore shipyard of Nampho. Kim besides attended that launch. 

North Korea has antecedently experienced accidents specified arsenic abstraction motorboat conveyance failures and civilian disasters that person subsequently been utilized to beforehand the relation of the enactment and the ruling Workers' Party successful correcting the problems.

The more-than-4,500-tonne destroyers launched by North Korea this twelvemonth are the country's largest warships yet.

In a study past week connected preparations for the astir caller launch, U.S.-based 38 North said it appeared the vessel would beryllium side-launched from the quay, a method not antecedently observed successful North Korea.

"The usage of this motorboat method could beryllium 1 of necessity, arsenic the quay wherever the vessel is being built does not person an incline," the 38 North study said.

Commercial outer imagery of the shipyard the time earlier the motorboat showed the destroyer positioned connected the quay with enactment vessels by its side.

A North Korea adept based successful Seoul said Pyongyang's disclosure was amazingly swift.

"It shows again Kim Jong-un's ruling benignant of cutting disconnected antagonistic rumours from spreading and controlling officials much forcefully by being unfastened astir it alternatively than hiding it," said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute.