Preview: The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea

citation

J. Stephen Morrison and Justin Kenny. "Preview: The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea." CSIS Commission on Strengthening America's Health Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 02, 2018. Accessed December 21, 2023. https://healthsecurity.csis.org/articles/preview-the-gathering-health-storm-inside-north-korea/

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The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea examines the rapid decay of North Korea’s health systems and the dangers it poses to neighboring countries, through interviews with experts on North Korea and health security and exclusive footage from inside the little-seen nation.

Photo Credit: GARY RAMAGE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

• Building a New Order

A nurse tends to new-born infants in a ward at the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital during a government-organised media tour in Pyongyang on May 7, 2016. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

The bleak health realities of North Korea are an understudied part of the larger problem of potential instability on the Korean peninsula.  North Korea has an exceptionally high rate of multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), an estimated 42% of its population is undernourished, and at least 3 in 10 North Korean citizens are stunted.  From a health security standpoint, these are just a few of the health issues that can pose an immediate threat to the surrounding region, especially through the possibility that conflict in North Korea could ignite a mass exodus of North Korean refugees carrying infectious diseases such as MDR-TB into South Korea and China.  The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea examines the rapid decay of North Korea’s health systems and the dangers it poses to neighboring countries, through interviews with experts on North Korea and health security and exclusive footage from inside the little-seen nation.

Here is an exclusive preview of The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea, launching later this month.