With the sinking of the South Korean Navy vessel Cheonan, the missile and nuclear tests and the fire-breathing rhetoric, it is easy to forget that North Korea is also an economic basket case. A nation that once outpaced its southern neighbor in economic development has been teetering on the brink of seeming collapse for years now. A new report on the horrific state of North Korea's health care system is a much-needed corrective to the prevailing image of the reclusive nation and a reminder of the appalling human price of the decisions made by the leadership in Pyongyang. While we cannot ignore the regime's bluster and provocations, we must also remember that millions of North Koreans are victims as well. It is our duty as fellow citizens to help ease their suffering.

In a grim new assessment, Amnesty International concludes that the Pyongyang government has systematically failed to provide its citizens with basic health care. The antiseptic language of the report — "The people of North Korea suffer significant deprivation in their enjoyment of the right to adequate health care" — glosses over an ugly reality. Hospitals are unheated, lack running water and often experience blackouts as a result of energy shortages. There is a chronic shortage of medicines, bandages and sterilized needles. There are cases of doctors being forced to perform amputations without anesthesia.

This sad situation is compounded by "chronic malnutrition" throughout the country. North Korea was hit by a famine in the 1990s that claimed as many as 2 million lives. The hardships continue amid economic mismanagement and a series of natural disasters. According to North Korean government statistics, between 2004 and 2008, the latest year for which data are available, food rations ranged from 150 grams per person per day to 350 grams per person per day. The World Food Program estimates that between 2003 and 2007, less than a quarter of households are on the official food distribution system and only two-thirds of farmers received food rations, and rarely the full entitlement. Half of North Koreans eat just two meals a day; some 9 million people out of a population of 23.7 million were considered to be "food insecure." Earlier this year, (South Korea's) Korea Rural Economic Institute concluded that North Korea's estimated shortfall for 2010 was 1.29 million tons of grain, or nearly four months of food supply.