At least five members of Pyongyang’s Party Committee were killed and 13 injured in a drunk driving accident after visiting an anti-American propaganda museum earlier this month, Daily NK has learned.
“Members of Pyongyang’s Potong River District Party Committee were involved in the accident after leaving the Sinchon Class Education Museum in Sinchon County, South Hwanghae Province,” a Pyongyang-based source with knowledge of the incident told Daily NK on Wednesday. “Five people died and 13 were injured in the crash, which happened on the expressway stretching between Pyongyang and Kaesong.”
The Sinchon Class Education Museum, also called simply the “Sinchon Museum,” provides anti-American education to visitors. The party committee members visited the museum as part of state efforts to improve their “class understanding” amidst nationwide emphasis on the importance of anti-imperialist class education.
“The incident occurred when the driver of the vehicle the party committee members were in crashed. Before getting in the vehicle, the driver had had some alcohol,” the source said.
The members had drunk alcohol as a group to commemorate their visit to the museum, and the driver of the bus was also offered two or three glasses, which reportedly turned to many more after that.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made efforts to improve road safety in the country by releasing proclamations in 2013 and 2015 saying that drivers who violate traffic rules or who fail to prevent road accidents face serious punishment.
North Korean officials consider drunk driving to be a major cause of traffic accidents and have warned drivers that they will face fines, lose their driver’s licenses, or suffer from temporary or permanent confiscation of their vehicles. The authorities have even threatened that violators can lose their jobs.
As this recent incident shows, however, these efforts have not been completely successful.
High-level members of the party committee in Pyongyang are trying to pin the blame on the bus driver, but this has instead created animosity toward them by many locals. Some have pointed out that while the bus driver is at fault, party cadres were also to blame for encouraging the man to drink.
“Families of those who died are also calling on the party committee members who encouraged the bus driver to drink to be held responsible,” another Daily NK source added.
An investigation into the accident is still ongoing.
The Pyongyang-Kaesong Expressway where the incident occurred is highly susceptible to car accidents because of shoddy road construction. The “Gyeongui Line On-site Investigation Report,” which was submitted to South Korea’s National Assembly by the Inter-Korean Road Joint Investigation Team in March, warned that the expressway poses a significant risk for major car accidents because of poorly-made pavement, cracks on tunnels, dangers from falling rocks, and other issues with the expressway’s infrastructure.
South Korean lawmakers have long decried the condition of North Korean roads. Even North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made note of his country’s poor road conditions during the inter-Korean summit in April of last year.
In April of 2018, a bus carrying Chinese tourists drove off a bridge on the expressway in the rain, killing 32 Chinese and four North Koreans.
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