NK 1: a new parameter

(Disclaimer: While I do have a keen interest in current events surrounding the Korean peninsula, I claim no expertise in politics or history of North Korea.  So, I apologize in advance for any misleading thoughts.)


Predicting the future of North Korea's regime is a challenging task for even the most learned experts of North Korean affairs.  Experts who had predicted an imminent regime collapse in the 90s were humbled by the unprecedented resilience of the current regime (the regime remains apparently intact today).  Perhaps because of this infamous prediction most experts are hesitant to paint any probable picture of North Korea's regime in the future.  Nonetheless, this has not prevented many from setting forth several scenarios.  From a layperson's perspective there are four (or some combination of):

1) Status quo: the regime remains intact unchanged
2) Apoptosis: the regime disintegrates slowly
3) Necrosis: the regime collapses suddenly (with inevitable 'debris' = unrest)
4) Differentiation: the regime transforms structurally and functionally

These scenarios have been debated to no end with analogies made to cases like China, Romania, Albania, Russia, Cuba, Germany, states that have undergone regime changes or failures.  I am in no position to judge how justifiable or informative these analogies and predictions are; all I can perceive is that there is a level of nervous uncertainty about future of NK as I try to illustrate in this diagram (the cloud being some expression of a confidence interval).

Recently, a new parameter has made an appearance in the prediction model.  Kim Jong Il's youngest son, Kim Jong Un [Un] has been appointed as the new successor to the NK regime.  This sent all the experts/journalists scrambling to speculate about how the NK regime will be affected by this unexpected and previously unknown factor (heck, they don't even know how old he is!).  What I can gather from the news is that rather than signaling a certain direction for NK's future, Un only adds to the uncertainty of the different scenarios.  Nonetheless, the new uncertainty offers some clues; it signals that some sort of change in the regime (as opposed to the status quo) is more likely than before, whether the agent be Un himself, or others, but that the direction of change remains uncertain with more stochasticity than before.

What this spells for the Korean peninsula is increased uncertainty, until more data on the new parameter can be gathered.  In the meantime, I just cross my fingers that 'necrosis' is not imminent. 

Show and Tell: New England Fall

"The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, -- of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, -- such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

 - Henry David Thoreau, excerpt from "Solitude", in Walden 

I too seek comfort in Nature's sympathy...

 

Walden Pond

Global Health

Recently I've had very engaging conversations about "Global Health" and its identity with some of my colleagues.  The more we talked about this increasingly popular and seemingly "sexy" field, the more elusive it became to me.  Ultimately, I felt that the field's amorphous and somewhat disjoint nature is precisely its beauty as it reflects the state and perspectives of public health around the world.  With that said, I'd be foolish to dismiss certain core values shared among the different thoughts on global health. 


Without referring to formal definitions, I took a moment to brainstorm about what types of issues are often spoken about in relation to global health.


1) Health disparities between populations
2) Human rights and social justice

3) Diseases that are indicators or consequences of health disparities (TB/HIV)

4) Diseases that have potential to transmit beyond borders (Influenza/SARS)

5) Globalization and migration

6) The impact of health on productivity
(and many more...)

In thinking about these divergent issues; we realize that they actually coalesce into a common discomfort of disparities in health across population, a common vulnerability to the effects of globalization, and a common sense of duty to do something about it. 

While our vulnerability and duty unite us, our platforms divide us once again.  How are we to implement "global health"?  By pushing a standard agenda forward in a top-down strategy, or by taking an approach that is more context-driven, and letting each case dictate the solution?  Is there such thing as a panacea for the world's ills?  If not, how much should we doubt universal guidelines?

A recent conversation with Prof. Wafaa El-Sadr was particularly enlightening.  I asked, How are we to promote health across the nations? She answered by emphasizing the importance of identifying those core elements that function cross-culturally, making analogies to the ubiquitous McDonalds franchise.  Pertaining to her own organization (i.e. ICAP*), she referred to the core elements of capacity building initiatives including infrastructural development, training and mentoring, monitoring and evaluations etc.  The catch was that each of the core elements had to, by protocol, engage the context and thereby create a partnership with the community all the while implementing a central strategy.  Basically she advocated neither a top-down or down-up approach, but rather an empirical combination of both, driven by common sense.

I am only beginning to scratch the surface of this field known as "global health".  The academic in me wants to define, theorize, and label concepts and strategies.  But in so much as "global heath" reflects the complex realities of the health and perspectives of the nations, I hope to resist the temptation to theorize and label, but take it at face value with good common sense. 


* ICAP supports more than 1000 HIV/AIDS clinics around the world: http://www.columbia-icap.org/ 

Show and Tell: Fort Tryon Park

 I have the great fortune to live within minutes of the Fort Tryon Park, a hidden jewel in Manhattan, which few tourists (or even Manhattan residents) venture to seek out.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Fort Tryon Park is accessible by the A train.  You can get to it from the 190th station.  You can also bring your car.  The few times I've been there I've seen plenty of parking.

If these open benches and the view of Hudson River don't entice you, I don't know what would.

One of my favorite spots is the Heather Garden, a well-maintained botanical garden.

It is also home to the Cloister's Museum, a museum for medieval art.  (I actually haven't gone in yet, but soon...)

Apparently, I wasn't the only one with a camera.  A ballet company came to do a photo-shoot.  

Until next time, Fort Tryon!