A German physician who worked as a volunteer doctor in North Korea for 18 months until being expelled at the end of last year has called for action to help suffering children in the country.
Nobert Vollertsen, 43, who entered North Korea as chief of an emergency medical team with the nongovernmental organization German Emergency Doctors, was able to move freely in North Korea after being awarded a friendship medal for providing his own skin to perform a skin graft operation on a badly burned patient.
"I'm a humanitarian aid worker, I'm a doctor and I'm an emergency doctor. And those children are dying and starving," he told a professional luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan earlier this week.