As a fellow Tokyoite once observed, Hokkaido people have a knack for interesting self-introductions. It's surely in part because everyone other than the indigenous Ainu came rather recently from elsewhere, and even people in late youth and early middle age are apt to be in touch with that history of migration: of the adventures and misadventures of grandparents and great-grandparents in the throes of rapid settlement (often with corresponding displacement), industrializing agriculture and fishery, global trade, imperial expansion (“Karafuto” still coming up more often in conversation than “Sakhalin”), accompanied by requisite academic investments in fields such as agronomy, foreign language, economics, and cultural production as well as, of course, movements of resistance to the same.

Although health care in North Korea has remained a major area of humanitarian concern for outside observers, important aspects of the health-care system have gone unnoticed. Reports (Amnesty International 2010; Huffington Post 2013; Watts 2003) have focused on the population's nutritional status and the dire condition of health-care facilities. In assessing a nation's health status, the World Health Organization (2009) pays attention to certain indicators and the specific areas for improvement that it has targeted. In contrast, there has been little discussion of daily healthcare practices in North Korea, which remain largely hidden because they take place outside of the formal system. Where do people turn first when their children fall ill?

“To Hell and Back” is a phrase that can bear a pretty heavy metaphorical load when it comes to talking about the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It’s also the title of a book by Charles Pellegrino.