Pandemic Strikes Chongjin, North Korea’s Fourth-Largest City

Previous posts on the spreading pandemic here, beginning last October.  Yonhap, quoting unnamed sources and the NGO Good Friends, tells us that things have gotten worse, and that the largest city in North Korea’s northeast faces outbreaks of several deadly diseases:

Four infectious diseases have stricken a North Korean city on the east coast, affecting up to 4,000 people, a source claimed Monday.

“Chongjin is overrun by scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus and paratyphoid. About 3,000 to 4,000 are suffering from the diseases,” the source said, asking to remain anonymous.

The source reported the infected people are mostly under 40 years of age. North Korean health authorities have halted railway operations to prevent the spread of disease and have imposed travel bans.

“When scarlet fever erupted late last year, North Korean authorities also imposed travel bans across the country,” the source added.

Oddly, South Korea, which is tripping all over itself and breaking U.N. resolutions  to fund the  North Korean regime,  is saying it won’t supply medical assistance.  Provided the aid is all accounted for and that dual-use items are not shipped in quantity, why on earth shouldn’t South Korea and other nations provide medical aid?  This has never been about punishing the North Korean people; it’s about helping them. 

Maybe that’s what makes medical aid so objectionable — the idea that it puts a compassionate face on a world that Kim Jong Il has spent such effort to demonize.  It causes me to wonder how long we’ll have to wait  until someone claims that this is the result of  U.S. biological warfare.   I could only cite circumstantial evidence, but  my suspicions  run in the opposite direction:  what is North Korea so eager to hide that it would prefer to deny its people medical aid? 

ht:  DPRK Studies