By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
The Lost Nomad links to a disturbing article about the horrible state of the once free health care system in the DPRK.
Her patients were expected to bring their own food and blankets. There often were no bandages, so they would cut strips of their own bedding. To hold their intravenous fluid, patients usually brought empty bottles of Chongjin’s most popular beer, Nakwon (Paradise).
“If they would bring in one beer bottle, they’d get one IV. If they’d bring two bottles, they would get two,” Kim said.
It wasn’t always that way. Until the 1990s, North Korea provided free health care to its citizens and its pharmaceutical factories produced medicines. But when the economy collapsed and the factories closed, drugs became scarce. Doctors could prescribe medicine, but the prescriptions could be filled only if the patient had the money and the luck to find the pills at a private market.
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“I saw a lot of 2-year-olds to 4-year-olds dying of malnutrition. Often it was not the starvation itself. They would get a minor cold that would kill them,” said Kim. “They would look at you with these big eyes. Even the children always knew they were dying.”
Recently launched blog Migukin broods on the fact that the American military is so preoccupied with Iraq that it would be difficult for it to address hotspots elsewhere around the globe such as the DPRK.
The Flying Yangban has a very interesting piece on how the longer unification is delayed, the more expensive it is projected to finally be.
GI Korea Blog’s comments regarding the vandalism that occurred recently at the UN Cemetery in Busan provides us with the quote of the week for this edition of On Other Blogs:
If someone has got a problem with Bush that is fine. Go stand on the street corner and protest. You have every right to do so but you don’t have the right to harm others or vandalize property. Especially the hollowed ground of UN soldiers buried at the UN Cemetery. That is right it isn’t just the remains of US soldiers buried in Pusan. The cemetery in Pusan is the only cemetery administered by the UN in the whole world and includes remains of soldiers from all the countries that took casualties during the war. I have traveled to the cemetery before and it is really a beautiful and solemn place for being situated in the middle of Korea’s 2nd largest city of Busan.
