Pills from Northeastern China Smuggled Into Korea: "IT'S PEOPLE!"

Well. Your "human interest" story of the...well. Excerpts:

South Korea has seized thousands of smuggled drug capsules filled with powdered flesh from dead babies, which some people believe can cure disease, officials said Monday. The capsules were made in northeastern China from babies whose bodies were chopped into small pieces and dried on stoves before being turned into powder, the Korea Customs Service said. Customs officials refused to say where the dead babies came from or who made the capsules, citing possible diplomatic friction with Beijing. Chinese officials ordered an investigation into the production of drugs made from dead fetuses or newborns last year. The customs office has discovered 35 smuggling attempts since August of about 17,450 capsules disguised as stamina boosters, and some people believe them to be a panacea for disease, the customs service said in a statement. The capsules of human flesh, however, contained bacteria and other harmful ingredients. The smugglers told customs officials they believed the capsules were ordinary stamina boosters and did not know the ingredients or manufacturing process...

What might have conceivably inspired such a move?

Funny thing is, that scene even made it into the movie. IMDB has:

It was an old tradition. Only the most dutiful of daughters would put her own flesh in a soup to save her mother's life. My mother did this with her whole heart even though my grandmother had disowned her. This is how a daughter honors her mother. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. This is the most important sacrifice a daughter can make for her mother.

So it would seem that there's some precedent in traditional Chinese medicine for the consumption of human flesh under certain conditions. In fact--oh, look!

Jing-Bao Nie, "“Human Drugs” in Chinese Medicine and the Confucian View: An Interpretive Study," Confucian Bioethics, Philosophy and Medicine, 2002, Volume 61, Part III, 167-206, DOI: 10.1007/0-306-46867-0_7

Here we get some evidence that though it definitely has a place in Chinese history, it has been the subject of some dispute in the past.

All of which serves to make the account of Dr. Mark Miravalle of "fetal soup" being served in Chinese restaurants a less unbelievable claim.

Well. That's all quite depressing. And then we've got the allegations that the Chinese government is harvesting human organs from political prisoners. We've also got the recent situation with Chen Guangcheng. What was he protesting against?  The Chinese one-child policy, forced abortions, sterilization, and all!

Said policy would appear to have provided the materials for those pills, and for that soup.  The current behavior of the Chinese government seems to remind me of something...