A mine shaft collapse at the February 8 Jikdong Youth Coal Mine in Sunchon, South Pyongan Province, has left six miners trapped inside, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a source in the province told Daily NK on Monday that the cave-in occurred on Jan. 11. “Rescue operations have begun to free six men trapped inside, but we don’t know when they will be rescued as the situation is quite difficult,” he said.
According to the source, workers had been reluctant to enter the tunnel in question because it had not been used for several years. As a result, the mine assembled a team of graduates from orphanage boarding schools and forced them into the mine. That is when the accident occurred.
The source said that the February 8 Jikdong Youth Coal Mine has a large number of experienced miners and discharged soldiers, but the mine tends to give easier assignments to the more experienced workers, who are more territorial anyway. Therefore, the mine usually sends newcomers to the most difficult places.
“The mine’s party committee decided to reopen the abandoned tunnel to improve results from January, as the mine has higher production targets this year, and sent about 10 volunteers who had graduated from orphanage boarding schools into the shaft,” he said.
He added that the party committee called them the “orphan team” and told them, “Since you’re young, inexperienced kids with no one to support you, make your own way by going into the tunnel and proving you can do a good job.”
With less than a year on the job and no proper boring, blasting, or drilling skills, they were forced into the tunnel without a single experienced technician by order of the mine’s party Committee, which called on them to increase the mine’s production figures from the beginning of the new year.
Ultimately, the shaft collapsed, and although efforts to rescue the six miners still trapped are ongoing, the mine believes they are already dead, as a week has passed since the accident. At the moment they are just trying to recover the bodies.
The source said that “miners, including other graduates of orphan schools, wept when they thought of the victims who had no parents or siblings to support them, saying they’d be dead too if they had entered that tunnel.
It was only after the shaft collapsed that officials realized that sending small teams of orphans into the tunnels was a mistake. The miners who escaped from the shaft where the accident occurred were transferred to other tunnels.
After the accident, some of the graduates of boarding schools for orphans at the mine quietly packed up and left.
“The police at the mine are looking for them, criticizing them as delinquents and saying they will live their lives as vagabonds,” the source said.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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The post N. Korean mine shaft collapses, leaving six trapped inside appeared first on Daily NK English.
January 26, 2024 at 08:11AM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)