North Korea: Amputations Without Anesthesia, By Candlelight
Tweet
That government can’t collapse quick enough.
North Korea’s health care system is in shambles with doctors sometimes performing amputations without anesthesia and working by candlelight in hospitals lacking essential medicine, heat and power, a rights watchdog said Thursday.
North Korea’s state health care system has been deteriorating for years as the country’s economic difficulties worsen. Many of the country’s 24 million people also reportedly face health problems related to chronic malnutrition, such as tuberculosis and anemia, Amnesty International said.
The New Yorker had a good piece this week on North Korea’s internal distress, but most of it is behind a paywall.
14 Responses to “North Korea: Amputations Without Anesthesia, By Candlelight”
GOP Rep. Spencer Bachus Facing House Ethics Probe For Insider Trading
Jennifer Aniston Reportedly Pregnant With Twins
PHOTOS: Tamara Ecclestone At The Langham Hotel
Red Front? “Center For American Freedom” Logo Echoes Communist Style
Romney Calls For Defunding Planned Parenthood, Wife Was A Donor
GOP Fundraising Email Asks Supporters To “Knock Out” Obama
Romney Comes Up Limp In Nevada
Obama Opens Lead On Romney In New Poll
Latest Entries
Why Do Liberals Support Drone Strikes?
Weekly Standard Rolls Out The Iraq Argument For Iran
Equal Polarization, My Ass
Some Crazy Stuff That Happened In World War II
Maryland Republican Campaign Funds Used To Defend Voter Suppression
The Obama Jobs Record In One Graph
Martin O’Malley All In For Marriage Equality
Newt Gingrich, Filled With More Excrement Than Your Average Politician
New Year, Powerline Still Stupid
Thanks Again
Meta
Blogroll
Disclaimer
The views on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America
© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Hard to believe they’ll collapse anytime soon, with China propping them up. They’d rather keep the Kim regime on life support than deal with a flood of refugees.
Also, fix yo headline, OW
Oddly, I first saw this story linked from someone on FaceBook.
You’ll never guess, but the guy said, and this is an exact quote:
“Welcome to ObamaCare, America. You get what you pay for and this is what “universal health-care” really is.”
(apparently, from his twitter feed, and he commented on FB thusly)
“To be fair, this won’t be ObamaCare TOMORROW, but if left unchecked it will degrade to this point. Maybe another American Revolution should be considered……..”
Huh?
Oh, I see. Fixed.
Parthy, I’ve seen that argument written before, but the entire population of NK, 24 million, wouldn’t even make a blip in the population of the PRC.
“Hard to believe they’ll collapse anytime soon, with China propping them up.”
It’s more complicated than that. China does give the DPRK aid, but it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts. As awful as the Kim Jong-il regime is, when it collapses it’s going to put huge humanitarian and financial strains on China and South Korea, and probably the US and Japan as well by default.
So the aid China gives is more like a grudging and half-assed attempt to prolong the inevitable pain of trying to integrate a hungry, un-educated population of millions into modern society.
Meanwhile South Koreans, as much as they hate Kim Jong-il, are generally in no hurry to see him fall or die of cancer either, since it would put a huge strain on them as well.
Complicated, to say the least. I hope the fucker dies sooner rather than later myself, but then a) there’s no guarantee the third son being groomed for leadership is any better and b) maybe some of the higher-up generals will decide to go out in a blaze of glory and launch an attack on the South, which might conceivably lead to World War III (and a nuclear WWIII at that) given China’s response or lack thereof.
The New Yorker had a good piece this week on North Korea’s internal distress, but most of it is behind a paywall.
This made me laugh.
DPRK—conservative Paradise… The elite living well, while the Proles getting grass for meals, medicine our of the 18th Century, and if they’re lucky, a bullet to the back of the head to ease their passing.
I’m surprised, Rush, Beck, Hannity et al aren’t clamouring to go there for their summers….
I’m surprised, Rush, Beck, Hannity et al aren’t clamouring to go there for their summers….
Why go there? They and their GOP cohorts are trying their damndest to bring that here!
Parthy, I’ve seen that argument written before, but the entire population of NK, 24 million, wouldn’t even make a blip in the population of the PRC.
That may be true, Quaker. But given the fact that they currently still have a great many of their own people living in poverty, it doesn’t strike me as inconceivable they’d consider aid to the Kim regime as an investment in their own security. I can’t imagine the administration taking kindly to an influx of Korean workers, skilled or unskilled, when their own labor is already dirt cheap.
The woman who wrote that New Yorker piece, Barbara Demick, also wrote a book on North Korea, Nothing to Envy. It’s supposed to be great. If it’s half as good as her New Yorker pieces (this one and a previous one), it will be a dynamite read.
(Sorry to plug books for two posts in a row. I’m not a viral marketer, honest.)
Heh, that’s the first thing I thought, too: ObamaCare preview! Don’t fool yourselves — NK’s government is based on Juche, their own version of Marxist-Leninism. It’s the same old centralized planning by the elite on behalf of the little people. That’s the polar opposite of the kind of government your conservative enemies advocate. The danger in such tight control is that it leads to worse poverty and misery, despite the good intentions; conservatives aren’t against it because they like poverty, they’re against it because they recognize the poverty it inevitably leads to. Every new batch of control freak elites thinks that they are finally the ones smart enough to do it right, and they are always proven wrong.
hahaha. teabagging wingers are always good for a laugh. i was thinking how funny it would be if one of them called nks system obamacare. and they did. hahahaha
Juche is a form of self-reliance above all else. Many historians have argued that the DPRK isn’t really Socialist or Marxist as much as it is ultra-nationalist. It’s about cutting off ties with the rest of the world and setting up a military government set up to propagate itself for future generations.
Sounds like Teabagger heaven to me.