August 2013

Songdowon International Children’s Camp is set on a beach front among a beautiful pine forest—in North Korea. It opened in the 60’s and was a destination for children from the communist countries at the time, many who often received a gift of their stay as a prize of some kind. North Korean children with particularly good grades are invited there, and are for the most part segregated from children from other countries. Recently however, the camp has been struggling to fill its beds. Every year the camp directors have to work much harder to convince foreign students to visit, thus putting at risk the camp’s mission to be international. They offer scholarship programs and reduced fees to entice students from Mongolia, Russia, Vietnam and even as far as Tanzania. Although the camp is cheap, it’s much more difficult to find people who want to attend. Students from China, who were frequent visitors in the past, now prefer to go to other destinations. The Supreme Leader, apparently aware of the problem, is planning to tackle it by transforming a nearby industrial port into a world class luxury resort. But… if they build it, will they come?

When “Death Takes a Holiday” as it did in the 1934 comedy-drama, no one could die. People in hospitals, those who were shot or hurt, and many others hovered in the area between death and life. Although the movie is a love story, one comes away with the idea that death is necessary. Now, decades later, when is death necessary and for whom, is being challenged. Dr Sam Parnia, critical care physician at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, is leading a revival of research in bringing clinically dead people back to life. Actually very few can as yet be brought back to life and then within 24 hours of their cardiac arrest, but Dr. Parnia hopes to extend this. To him the death of someone like actor James Gandolfini could have been among those which could have been reversed. It may be too early to say the dead can be revived, but Parnia’s work and research nevertheless point out the implications and issues we must individually and as a society begin to wrestle with. Who is to be revived? Would someone who is 99 year old and frail who dies from cardiac arrest qualify? What about the cost? Are insurance to cover resuscitation measures? What about the DNR measures and the living will we all ought to have in place? Would we want to thus be resuscitated, as a matter of course or only under certain circumstances?