Pyongyang said on Wednesday that officials who neglected their disaster prevention duties had caused unspecified casualties, without providing details on the location.
It said on Saturday that there were no casualties at all in the Sinuiju area, the region Pyongyang claimed suffered the “greatest flood damage.”
North Korea and Russia have been allies since the North’s founding after World War II and have drawn even closer since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Media in South Korea, which has offered urgent support to the victims, said this week the toll of dead and missing could be as high as 1,500.
Kim lashed out at the reports, dismissing them as a “smear campaign to bring disgrace upon us and tarnish” the North’s image.
North Korea is accused of breaching arms control measures by supplying weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.
Natural disasters tend to have a greater impact on the isolated and impoverished country due to its weak infrastructure, while deforestation has left it vulnerable to flooding.
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