Hiding North Korea’s Health Decline

According to a new report by the U.N. Population Fund, the socioeconomic gap between the two Koreas continues to widen:

South Korea’s infant mortality rate ranked seventh in the world with four deaths out of 1,000 births while the North slid to 133rd place from last year’s ranking of 99 with 47 deaths per 1,000.

The Stalinist state recorded a higher death rate of women from complications related to pregnancy and labor with an estimated 370 cases per 100,000 live births for 2009, while South Korea stood at 14 per 100,000.

That’s odd, because I’d previously read somewhere that “The World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies have praised their delivery of basic health services, noting that North Korean children were far better vaccinated than American children, and that life expectancy rates in North Korea surpassed that of South Korea.”