PYONGYANG, July 11 (Xinhua) -- The top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) called on the country's officials to uphold integrity at a meeting focused on anti-corruption work, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Saturday.

This picture taken on July 9, 2026 and released by DPRK's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on July 10, 2026 shows DPRK leader Kim Jong Un attending the First Enlarged Meeting of the Ninth Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea at the government complex No. 1 in Pyongyang. (File photo: AFP)

"All the officials should keep principle and uprightness as their lifeblood and should be mindful of the Party's trust," Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and president of the State Affairs of the DPRK, was quoted by the KCNA as saying during a joint meeting here on Friday attended by senior officials from the WPK, the government and the army.

The meeting notified the participants of the high-profile irregularities and corruption involving Pak Hui Chol, former vice-director in charge of organizational affairs of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army, and his followers, and discussed how to draw a serious lesson from the crimes, the KCNA said in its report.

The KCNA said that Pak was accused of illegally acquiring wealth by abusing his power of organizational work and appointing cadres, posing a serious challenge to the WPK's line of strengthening discipline.

Pak "exerted a very harmful influence on strengthening the ranks of cadres of the People's Army in a qualitative way, enhancing its fighting efficiency and establishing sound military traits," the KCNA report said, calling his scandals "extra-large crimes that go beyond imagination in view of their dangerousness and harmfulness."

Drawing lessons from the Pak case, Kim noted it is impossible to prevent such wrongdoings if the country fails to steadily intensify education and control on its officials, said the report.

The WPK Central Committee will "steadily enhance the intensity of the organizational and ideological offensive for transforming the ranks of cadres into an elite and of the legal struggle for rooting out irregularities and corruption," the DPRK leader said.