SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean officials offered a rare public apology for the collapse of an apartment building under construction in Pyongyang, which a South Korean official said was believed to have caused considerable casualties that could mean hundreds might have died.
The word of the collapse in the secretive nation’s capital was reported Sunday morning by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, which gave no death toll but said that the accident was “serious” and upset North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
The report said it occurred in the capital’s Phyongchon district on Tuesday “as the construction of an apartment house was not done properly and officials supervised and controlled it in an irresponsible manner.”
In Seoul, a government official speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information said that the 23-story apartment building that collapsed was presumed to have housed 92 families.
That could mean that the casualties could be in the hundreds because a typical North Korean family has four members. However, it wasn’t clear that all the residents were inside at the time of the collapse, or that four people lived in each household.
It is not unusual for people to start living in apartments before the construction is complete.
The official said he did not have any figure for the actual death toll.
According to the KCNA report, the rescue operation ended Saturday and officials apologized to bereaved families and district residents.
The report cited one official as saying Kim Jong Un “sat up all night, feeling painful after being told about the accident.”
The highly controlled state media for the authoritarian regime rarely report news that might be considered negative.
The building collapse also came at a time when the South Korean government has received near daily criticism from its citizens as well as regular bashing by North Korean media for its handling of the ferry sinking that left more than 300 people dead or missing.