On April 27, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea formally launched a medical videoconference network to
provide provincial hospitals with access to specialists in the capital city of
Pyongyang. Ironically, the initiative was carried out with the assistance of
the World Health Organization, an agency
of the United Nations, which, along with the United States, is
responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people during the Korean
War.
|
Kim Man Yu Hospital, Pyonyang, North Korea |
The WHO has been providing cameras, computers and other
equipment to North Korea to help connect a main hospital in Pyongyang with medical
facilities in 10 provinces. The system is designed to allow doctors to
communicate with each other and enable specialists to serve patients in rural
regions.
WHO Director-General Margaret
Chan participated in the official inaugural ceremony for the system held
at the Kim Man Yu hospital in Pyongyang. Chan was the first WHO chief to visit the
DPRK since the agency opened its office in Pyongyang in 2001.
While the new system is a positive development for North
Korea, it cannot be overlooked that insufficiencies in the country’s state health care system
are directly linked to the history of imperialist intervention in the region.
The U.S.-U.N. war on Korea claimed the lives of
5 million people, devastated the entire peninsula and divided a whole people in
two. The imperialist invaders, however, were ultimately driven from the North
by the combined forces of the Korean People’s Army and nearly 1 million Chinese
volunteers in December 1950.
Since 1953, the United States has refused to
sign a peace treaty, leaving the two sides technically still at war. The
unsettled conflict provides the United States with a flimsy pretext to station
tens of thousands of troops on the North-South border and impose crippling
economic and financial sanctions.
The new medical videoconference network
is a welcome development for the DPRK, but cannot even begin to erase the
history of exploitation and oppression inflicted upon the Korean people by
world imperialism.
Stop the war on
Korea! Self-determination for the Korean people! End the sanctions and blockade
of North Korea! Hands off Korea now!
