If you’ve seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” you surely remember the “bring out your dead!” scene – you know, the guy who’s not dead yet? (If you haven’t seen the film, you can watch the scene here).

That scene loses its humor slightly after reading the following passage from The New Yorker’s Barbara Demick, reporting on one woman’s struggle to survive during a persistent famine in North Korea in the 1990s:

Mrs. Song often stumbled across the dead and the dying. Late one afternoon, on her way home from the market, she took a detour to the train station, hoping to find customers to buy some unsold cookies. Workers were sweeping the station’s plaza. A couple of men walked by, pulling a heavy wooden cart. It was filled with half a dozen bodies, people who had died at the station overnight. A head lolled as the cart jostled over the pavement. It belonged to a man about forty years old. His eyes blinked faintly. Not quite dead yet, but close enough to be carted away.