When I was a prison doctor, my patients — the prisoners — would often try moral blackmail. If I did not give them what they wanted, they said, they would kill someone, and then it would be on my conscience.
I never gave in to the blackmail, and eventually the prisoners abandoned the attempt. But I always had a niggling fear that they might carry out their threat. The fact that they were responsible for their own actions was never sufficient to allay it entirely.
North Korea is the international blackmailer par excellence. An article in The Lancet for July 31 titled “North Korea’s health system in disarray” is subtitled “Food shortages, international sanctions, and a lack of funding have pushed North Korea’s health system past breaking point.” A little later we read that “fears are increasing that North Korea is on the verge of another famine as a result of cuts in international aid …”
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