Back in April, the director of the U.N.-run World Health Organization traveled to Communist North Korea to assess its medical system. She forbade foreign reporters to go with her.
Considering the extreme poverty suffered by that nation’s citizens, it was strange to hear the head of the U.N. group praise North Korean health care. She said citizens there enjoy “universal” coverage, and that a child immunization program there is the “envy” of many nations.
But scores of defectors from the totalitarian regime tell a very different story. One told rights group Amnesty International that after his ankle was crushed in a train accident, five people held him down while a doctor amputated part of his leg without anesthesia. Another challenged the claim that North Korea has “universal” coverage.
“People in North Korea don’t bother going to the hospital if they don’t have money. If you don’t have money, you die,” the defector said, though some get care by offering doctors alcohol or cigarettes. Medicine, heat and even electricity are sometimes lacking in hospitals, Amnesty found.
We are not surprised by those horrible conditions in a dictatorship, where there is no free market to foster efficiency. Sadly, it is also no surprise that the corrupt U.N. covered up such conditions – conditions that would be alleviated if only Communist North Korea, like South Korea, were free.