On May 25 the Tokyo Shimbun daily reported that four North Korean engineers were executed “over the deadly collapse of a new high-rise apartment building in Pyongyang.”

The death toll in the May 13 collapse “may be as high as 500 people.”

According The Chosun Ilbo, a source told the Shimbun that “four design and construction engineers were executed and the military official in charge of the project was sent to a prison camp.”

The Ilbo reported that, while the cause of the collapse had not been confirmed, structural weaknesses may have been caused by the fact that “on-site directors and workers often siphon off steel and cement to sell on the black market.”

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