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.