Scarlet Fever Outbreak Spreads in N. Korea

South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency is now picking up the story that the Daily NK first reported, and the news isn’t good.

Scarlet fever has been spreading fast in North Korea for nearly a month and is showing signs of becoming a full-blown pandemic despite efforts by North Korean authorities to contain the disease, a source close to the North said Wednesday.

The disease first broke out in the communist state’s northern Yanggang Province last month, but is quickly spreading to other parts of the country, the source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.

North Korea needs to let the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control in to help control this … now.  There is another, truly terrifying aspect of this story:  when I first heard about this outbreak,  it was passed to me as an inquiry about a biowar experiment that got out of control.  At that time, I hadn’t heard anything.  It’s possible that the two stories are based on separate incidents, or that the first rumor was the inevitable distortion of a first report as it’s passed as samizdat in a closed society.  The reported  epidemic is in Ryanggang (also spelled “Yanggang”) Province, which is in the same general area  where a number of North Korean labor or concentration camps  are located.  Among those camps is Camp 22, where we’ve previously heard reports of horrific experiments on prisoners, including biological experiments.

For now, consider  that last part of the charge plausible but unproven.  The urgent need is to stop the spread of the disease, and North Korea can’t do that by itself.

9 Responses

  1. What are the treatments for scarlet fever and would there be any way that somehow we could get them to people there around the political idiots on both sides, I wonder?

    People daying are people dying and we should recognize that those tragedies transcend politics. That is, we SHOULD recognize that if we can still feel, love, etc.

    Efforts like that from our side would also go a long way towards radically undermining the mandatory hate mentalities that seem to perpetuate the nightmare there so effectively..

  2. Humanitarian aid has not been withheld or made subject to sanctions by “both sides” and medicines and food are again exempt from the latest UN actions. The burden is on Chris to put some flesh on his latest strawman.

  3. Good! I am sorry, I don’t know what you mean by putting flesh on the strawman.. What I am saying is that the best way to end the vicious circle is to avoid falling into the adversarial role trap as much as possible.. This has the result of making those who would start wars seem out of place.. (and rightfully so)

    No, I would not initiate any kind of sunshine policy, no.. but I think that we also need to do our best not to get dragged down by hatred. Diseases like scarlet fever are medical problems and they should be treated pragmatically by doctors. We should offer help, as much as they will take. (which sounds like perhaps not much, unfortunately)

    I am one of those people who thinks that in a normal world, the Kim regime would find it very difficult to survive very long at all. The only thing that keeps him there is isolation and ignorance, and he does his best to conceal his need for it but he has it..

  4. Doesn’t plague usually follow famines? Their sanitation system must be completely broken as well. I foresee another round of starvation of epic scale. The thing is, DPRK kicked out the food aid groups. It’s as if KJI regards the death of a million people as yet another “card” in his negotiation antics. For all we know, he basically ordered their death by starvation as they are being ideologically “taineted” by their proximity to China. If even 5 million DPRK citizens die of starvation, in KJI’s sick mind, that is only 25% of his man-power, and DPRK can weather the storm. Our only option is to make sure that 20 million DRPK citizens, that is 100% of his man-power knows the truth.

    Can’t we also sanction expensive medication that only the cadres will get anyway?

  5. This is exactly what I was thinking. In fact, I think that at one point, KJI stated something like “60%” of the people in North Korea could sacrifice their lives for the Dear Leader and that would just make the country stronger.. (several defectors, I think, have brought this statement up at various times, as an example of what they thought he might be willing to do if it would save him.)

    In organizational behavior theory there are a number of hypothesis that I think are now somewhat well-proven by experiment that say that the more ‘investment’ people have put into a way of seeing things, the less likely they are to look at evidence that challenges this world view rationally.. and the more welcoming they may be of ‘evidence’ that allows them to stick with their already held beliefs, however scant.

    The “Groupthink” theory of Irving Janis and the “Cognitive Dissonance” theory of Leon Festinger come to mind..

    Look them up, my memory has not been working so well recently.. There is one more, an important one, but I can’t remeber the guys name..

    Also look at the famous Milgram experiment (the one with electric shocks and authoritative persons telling the experimental subjects to administer them.. even though it was killing someone..)