> "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.
> In 2015 South Korean researchers studied the health records of North Korean defectors who had visited a hospital in Cheonan between 2006 and 2014.
> They found that they showed higher rates of chronic hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis C, tuberculosis and parasite infections, compared to South Koreans.
> 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."
Living in borderline survivable conditions makes the body much more susceptible to infection. Add to that a virtually non-existent medical system and people are going to be overall less healthy. Using "night soil" is likely low on the list of causes for higher infection rates in North Korea.
Comparing the health of North Koreans and South Koreans is not a fare comparison. One nation has medical infrastructure, a good food supply, and a functioning economy. The other is a black hole with people regularly starving, no legal economy, and medical care only for the politically connected.
I've stopped believing sensational stories about North Korea after one too many stories about someone official getting executed only for them to show up alive and well a few weeks later.
Hepatitis B is a STD; presumably they meant Hepatitis A? There was an outbreak of that just last year in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/outbreaks/2022/hav-contaminate... that appear to have come from Mexican strawberries; 'the Mexicans must be using night soil' is not the first conclusion I would have jumped to. Same for Hepatitis C, in 2020 there were 107k newly identified chronic infections in the US.
Regarding the worm, a quick google suggests that the largest roundworm parasite of humans is Ascaris lumbercoides, about which wiki tells me that males are up to 12 inches long and females up to 19 inches long; an 11 incher doesn't seem that remarkable in comparison.
Do human parasites in human poop spread to more humans animals fed on plants fed on human poop, or only of humans eat the plants fed on human poop?
Can the parasites be filtered away?
Also, couldn't NK parasites be explained by a general lack of health and hygiene technology in NK? Parasites are a major problem in large parts of Africa too, but are controlled when medications are deployed.
Some parasites are human specific, but a lot of them will manage just fine in many mammals. Health and hygiene is likely a major factor, but managing human waste in a sanitary way is one of the big jobs of community health and hygiene efforts; that and access to clean water. Proper health protocols wouldn't allow for untreated night soil to be used as fertilizer, but maybe they don't have access to treatment or other fertilizer, so there you go.
Which causes this: North Korean defector found to have 'enormous parasites'
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-420...
> "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.
> In 2015 South Korean researchers studied the health records of North Korean defectors who had visited a hospital in Cheonan between 2006 and 2014.
> They found that they showed higher rates of chronic hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis C, tuberculosis and parasite infections, compared to South Koreans.
> 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."