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The Emergence of an Informal Health-Care Sector in North Korea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Eun Jeong Soh
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Although health care in North Korea has remained a major area of humanitarian concern for outside observers, important aspects of the health-care system have gone unnoticed. Reports (Amnesty International 2010; Huffington Post 2013; Watts 2003) have focused on the population's nutritional status and the dire condition of health-care facilities. In assessing a nation's health status, the World Health Organization (2009) pays attention to certain indicators and the specific areas for improvement that it has targeted. In contrast, there has been little discussion of daily healthcare practices in North Korea, which remain largely hidden because they take place outside of the formal system. Where do people turn first when their children fall ill?

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 11 , June 2016 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

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