The collapse of North Korea’s medical
system and dysfunction at state-run hospitals has triggered a change in
preference for majors at medical schools, with students now opting more for
health inspection and pharmaceutical studies over medicine, Daily NK has
learned.
“Health inspection and pharmacy colleges
are the most popular among med-school applicants these days not only in
Pyongyang but across the country,” a source from South Pyongan Province told
Daily NK in a telephone conversation.
Daily NK crosschecked this with a source in
North Pyongan Province.
He added, “Those were the two majors
students who came from families with no power and connections would go to
because they have no choice, but now, they’re considered majors with goods
prospects and opportunities to collect bribes.”
Those who graduate with a degree in health
inspection have a much better chance of becoming a quarantine officer at ports
and border customs offices. “Three years of that will make you rich,” people
often say, according to the source. This is because all exports and imports
must go through quarantine, and those who run trade companies are eager to
offer up bribes in dollars or goods to avoid unsavory run-ins with the
quarantine officers.
Another promising job would be with the
local health and quarantine office located in each province, city, and county.
Officers there are tasked with issuing ‘quarantine certificates’ for train
passengers to ensure they are not carrying infectious diseases.
“Most vendors on business and other people
who need to travel find the process of acquiring a certificate very cumbersome
and just pay bribes to get them instead,” he explained.
The opportunities do not stop there. The
post of ‘air pollution inspector’ at the health inspection office, which gives
people the unique authority of overseeing pollution levels at foreign currency
earning enterprises and local factories, also tops the list.
“Cadres at state-run companies have no
interest in pollution prevention measures. All they care about is money, and to
make sure the factories are not put on hold, they pay the inspectors with all
kinds of different bribes,” the source asserted.
He elaborated that inspectors typically
measure the levels of smoke, dust, and gas emissions of mines, steel mills, and
chemical factories in Pyongyang and other main cities. If the facilities are
found to be producing pollutants above levels or operating without dust and
fume removal devices, the inspectors issue fines or ‘red tickets’ and order a
temporary halt on the factories.
In the case of students who graduate from
the school of pharmacy, they look for work within the markets — a trend
already established by doctors who are unable to make ends meet. “These days,
90 percent of the people who are selling medicine illegally at market stalls
and at the entrance used to be male and female doctors who once worked in the
department of surgery, internal medicine, and pediatrics,” the source said.
“After having their already limited rations
and salaries cut off, doctors have either moved on to medical practitioners
under state-run enterprises that allow them to sell goods, or in the case of
women, many of them quit their jobs as doctors and get involved in the market.”
Pharmacists were once confined to
small corners at state-run hospitals, churning out herbal Korean medicine. But
now, with no medicine or rations for doctors available, pharmacists are much
more popular than doctors.
“On top of that,” he noted, “if they are assigned to
provincial, city, or county ‘medical supply management offices’ they are able
to get their hands on ‘UN medicine’ and supplies from international aid
organizations, giving them the opportunity to make large sums of money.”
Until the 1990s, doctors, whether graduates from medical schools
in Pyongyang or even smaller schools in other regions, were widely considered to have
stable careers with no worries of making ends meet during their lifetime, according to the source;
however, as the country’s economy started to erode away, so did the medical
system, grinding basic rations to doctors and nurses to a halt.
