North Korean authorities are urging citizens to gargle with salt water daily as a disease prevention measure during their September-October sanitation campaign. Locals, however, scoff at the advice, suggesting that more substantial health measures are needed to truly stay healthy.
A source in Ryanggang province recently told The Daily NK that the health bureau of the provincial people’s committee has instructed neighborhood watch units to tell members to “regularly use saltwater mouthwash every day to prevent diseases” in accordance with an order from the country’s health ministry.
North Koreans have conducted regular spring (March – April) and fall cleanup campaigns since the time of North Korea’s first leader, Kim Il Sung. These campaigns initially focused on cleaning up streets, villages, and workplaces, but since the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts have focused on preventing disease by disinfecting or cleaning sources and habitats of disease vectors.
North Koreans are mocking the government’s salt water gargling advice, viewing it as a sign of the country’s inadequate healthcare system.
“If saltwater mouthwash could prevent disease, would so many people have suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic?” one person asked. Another sarcastically noted, “In other countries, people get COVID-19 vaccines easily, but in our ‘leading socialist system,’ mouthwash is medicine.”
The advice has been called “quite bizarre” by skeptical citizens.
“When North Koreans get sick, they go to medicine vendors in the market or visit neighborhood doctors instead of going to the hospital or pharmacy, but if you don’t have money, you can’t buy medicine or get proper treatment,” the source said. “So people have been gargling salt water as a folk remedy for fear of getting sick as their immunity drops with the change of seasons, even if the state hasn’t ordered them to do so.”
With such poor health care, North Koreans can only use folk remedies made from easily available ingredients. Salt water mouthwash is just one of them.
Still, the North Korean government’s prioritization of saltwater mouthwash for disease prevention has drawn bitter laughter from the public.
On Sept. 8, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper said that the core of the latest cleanliness campaign should be intensive activities to eradicate disease vectors, along with efforts to find places and people affected by recent heavy rains and floods, and locals unable to prepare for winter, to repair or renovate their homes and communities.
The Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
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