A woman in Yanggang Province recently died after receiving an opium injection to treat a cold, Daily NK has learned.
The woman, identified by her last name of Ri, was in her 20s and lived in Kimjongsuk County, a reporting partner in Yanggang Province told Daily NK on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
Ri was a retail merchant who sold daily necessities from her home after bringing them in from nearby Hyesan. Recently, however, she began suffering from a low-grade fever, chills, headache and other cold symptoms. When her symptoms did not improve even after taking cold medicine she had at home, she proceeded to get some rest in bed.
Ri’s mother purchased some opium to treat her daughter’s illness and injected it into her. She mixed a lump of opium with some water in a spoon and cooked it. Then the mother loaded the liquified opium into a syringe and injected it into her daughter’s vein.
After receiving this injection of opium without a proper medical prescription, Ri lost consciousness and ultimately died.
Due to the poor state of North Korea’s medical system and medicine shortages, North Koreans have long used opium, meth and other narcotics as remedies. Medicine shortages have grown worse during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the use of narcotics in lieu of proper medications has skyrocketed. This situation has led to a never-ending string of deaths.
Fake medicines have also emerged during the course of the pandemic. Not only do these drugs have little effect, but they often harm the people who take them.
The use of narcotics, including opium, has drastically increased amid the country’s medicine shortages, leading to overdoses among people taking them. Ri’s case shows the realities faced by many people in North Korea, the reporting partner claimed.
“If the medicine you take doesn’t work, you have to go to the hospital, but the doctors ask for a bribe before they examine you and decide your treatment. The current reality is that many people are dying as more and more sick people — unable to go to the hospital because of the bribery — buy narcotics instead.”
Ri’s mother, for her part, is devastated, and is blaming herself for her daughter’s death, the reporting partner added.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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