PAJU, South Korea (AP) — As a medical student in North Korea, Lee Gwang-jin said he treated his fevers and other minor ailments with traditional herbal medicine. But a bad illness could mean trouble because hospitals in his rural hometown lacked ambulances, beds, even the electricity sometimes needed to treat critical or emergency patients.
So Lee was skeptical when he heard recent reports from North Korea’s state media claiming that so-called Koryo traditional medicine plays a key role in the country’s fight against COVID-19, which has killed millions of people all over the world.
“North Korea is using Koryo medicine a lot (for COVID-19) … but it’s not a sure cure,” said Lee, who studied Koryo medicine before fleeing North Korea in 2018 for a new life in South Korea. “Someone who is destined to survive will survive (with this medicine), but North Korea cannot help others who are dying.”
Like many other parts of life in North Korea, the medicine that the state says is curing its sick is being used as a political symbol. That, experts say, will finally allow the country to say its leaders have beaten the outbreak, where other nations have repeatedly failed, providing home remedies regardless of outside aid.
As state media spin stories about the drug’s effectiveness and huge production efforts to make more, there are questions about whether people with serious illnesses are getting the treatment they need.
Defectors and experts believe that North Korea is mobilizing Koryo medicine simply because it does not have enough modern medicine to fight COVID-19.
“Treating mild symptoms with Koryo medicine is not a bad option. … But the coronavirus does not cause only mild symptoms,” said Yi Junhyeok, a traditional practitioner and researcher at the South Korean Institute of Oriental Medicine. “When we think about critical and high-risk patients, North Korea needs vaccines, emergency care systems and other medical resources that it can use to” reduce fatalities.
More than two months have passed since North Korea admitted to its first coronavirus outbreak, and the country has reported an average of 157 cases of the fever each day over the past seven days, a significant drop from a peak of around 400,000 newspapers in May It also maintains a widely disputed claim that only 74 of about 4.8 million fever patients have died, a death rate of 0.002% that would be the lowest in the world if true.
Despite widespread foreign doubts about the veracity of North Korea’s reported statistics, there is no indication that the outbreak has caused a catastrophe in North Korea. Some outside experts say the North may soon formally declare victory over COVID-19 in an effort to boost internal unity. North Korea may emphasize the role of Koryo medicine as a reason.
“North Korea calls Koryo medicine ‘juche (self-sufficient) medicine,’ treats it highly and considers it one of its political symbols,” said Kim Dongsu, a professor at Korea’s Dongshin University College of Korean Medicine. from the South “North Korea does not have many academic and cultural achievements to announce, so it will probably actively propagate Koryo medicine.”
North Korea officially incorporated Koryo medicine, named after an ancient Korean kingdom, into its public health system in the 1950s. Its importance has grown considerably since the mid-1990s, when North Korea begin to suffer a severe shortage of modern medicine during a crippling famine and economic crisis that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Koryo medicine refers to herbal concoctions that sometimes include animal parts, acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, and meridian massage. These ancient remedies are also used in many Asian and Western nations. But while in these countries traditional and modern medicine work independently, North Korea has combined them.
Medical students must study both modern and traditional medicine in school, regardless of their specialty. So once they become professional doctors, they can practice both. Every hospital in North Korea has a Koryo medicine department. There are also Koryo medicine only hospitals.
Kim Jieun, a defector who is a traditional doctor in South Korea, said she majored in Koryo medicine at the North’s school but eventually worked as a pediatrician and internal medicine doctor. He said that South Koreans generally use traditional medicine to maintain or improve their health, but North Koreans use it to treat various ailments.
“In South Korea, patients with brain hemorrhage, hepatocirrhosis, liver cancer, ascites, diabetes and kidney infections do not go to traditional clinics. But in North Korea, traditional doctors treat them,” said Kim, who resettled in South Korea in 2002 and now works at Well Saem Korean Medicine Hospital in Seoul.
North Korea’s leading newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, has recently published a series of articles praising herbal medicine and acupuncture for curing fever patients and reducing the consequences of COVID-19 illnesses, such as abnormal pains, heart and kidney problems, nausea and cough.
The newspaper also published leader Kim Jong Un’s calls to adopt Koryo medicine. Other state media reports said Koryo medicine production has quadrupled since last year, while a large amount of modern medicine has also been rapidly delivered to local medical institutions, a claim that cannot be denied. independently verify.
North Korea’s nominally free socialist medical system remains in chaos, with defectors testifying that they had to buy their own medicine and pay doctors for surgeries and other treatments. They say North Korea’s advanced hospitals are largely concentrated in Pyongyang, the capital, home to the ruling elite and upper-class citizens loyal to the Kim family.
Lee, 29, who attended medical school in the North Korean city of Hyesan, said doctors in Koryo reused their acupuncture needles after sterilizing them with alcohol and that hospitals they usually charge patients for using electricity for a medical exam.
HK Yoon, a former North Korean doctor who fled the country in the mid-2010s, said his mid-level hospital in the northeast had no ambulance, no oxygen concentrator and only three or four beds in the emergency room. He said he shared surgical equipment with other doctors and his monthly salary was the equivalent of 800 grams (1.76 pounds) of rice.
“My heart hurts when I remember the lack of surgical equipment,” said Yoon, who asked to be identified only by initials because of safety concerns for relatives in North Korea. “When my patients were critical, I wanted to do surgeries quickly. But I couldn’t because someone else was using surgical equipment and I was worried about how soon I could sterilize it and use it.”
Some experts previously predicted that the outbreak of COVID-19 could cause dire consequences in North Korea because most of its 26 million people are not vaccinated and about 40% of its people are malnourished. Now, they speculate that North Korea is likely not reporting its death count to avoid political damage to Kim Jong Un.
Lee, the former North Korean medical student, said people in Hyesan didn’t go to hospitals unless they were very sick.
“When they are moderately sick, they only get acupuncture or Koryo herbal medicine. They rely on Koryo medicine, but they also don’t make much money, and Koryo medicine is cheaper than Western medicine,” Lee said.