North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fired a senior official tasked with economic policy and condemned “incompetent” party members, according to state media, in a rare public rebuke of officials in the secretive state.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Tuesday that Kim had dismissed Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho during the inauguration ceremony of the first stage of a modernisation project at the Ryongsong Machine Complex.

The North Korean leader fired Yang “on the spot”, KCNA said, adding that Kim considered the vice premier as “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties”.

“Put simply, it was like hitching a cart to a goat – an accidental mistake in our cadre appointment process,” Kim was quoted in the news report as saying. “After all, it is an ox that pulls a cart, not a goat,” he added.

Yang, a former machinery industry minister promoted to vice premier in charge of the machinery sector, is also an alternate member of the party’s leadership council, according to South Korea’s state news agency Yonhap.

Yang’s replacement has not been announced.

The removal comes as North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party gears up for its Ninth Party Congress, which is expected to convene soon to set out major policy goals for the country.

During the visit to the industrial machinery complex on Monday, Kim also blasted officials whom he blamed for delays in the modernisation project.

“Owing to the irresponsible, rude and incompetent economic guidance officials, the first-stage modernisation project of the Ryongsong Machine Complex encountered difficulties,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

He also slammed party members who, for “too long”, had “been accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness”.

Kim warned that current economic policymakers could “hardly guide the work of readjusting the country’s industry as a whole and upgrading it technologically”.

The public admonition of officials, which Yonhap described as “rare”, appeared aimed at tightening discipline among officials in advance of the Party Congress.

Last week, Yonhap reported that North Korea had replaced its top military officials in charge of guarding Kim, amid what it called “assassination concerns”.

According to the report, the chiefs of three major North Korean units, the Guard Office of the ruling party, the Guard Department of the State Affairs Commission and the Bodyguard Command, were all replaced.

While rare, the public dismissals mirror past cases, such as Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed in 2013 after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew, according to Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies.

The North Korean leader is “using public accountability as a shock tactic to warn party officials”, Yang told the AFP news agency. (Al Jazeera)