people in the South Korean capital to refrain from touching balloons
carrying toilet paper,
Yeah… I mean, probably a good idea in general, but particularly in North Korea’s case.
I understand that North Korea can’t afford chemical fertilizer, so they use human waste, which has resulted in problems with parasites that are transmitted through fecal matter making their way through the population.
A North Korean soldier who was shot while fleeing across the border has an extremely high level of parasites in his intestines, his doctors say.
The defector crossed the demilitarised zone on Monday, but was shot several times by North Korean border guards.
Doctors say the patient is stable - but “an enormous number” of worms in his body are contaminating his wounds and making his situation worse.
His condition is thought to give a rare insight into life in North Korea.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 20 years as a physician,” South Korean doctor Lee Cook-jong told journalists, explaining that the longest worm removed from the patient’s intestines was 27cm (11in) long.
“I don’t know what is happening in North Korea, but I found many parasites when examining other defectors,” Professor Seong Min of Dankook University Medical School was quoted by the Korea Biomedical Review as saying.
Parasites which enter the body via contaminated food are often worms.
The soldier’s food may have been contaminated because the North still uses human faeces as fertiliser, known as “night soil”.
Lee Min-bok, a North Korean agriculture expert, told Reuters: “Chemical fertiliser was supplied by the state until the 1970s. By the 1990s, the state could not supply it any more, so farmers started to use a lot of night soil instead.”
If these faeces are untreated and fertilise vegetables that are later eaten uncooked, the parasites get into the mouth and the intestines of the person.