Read Online My Holiday in North Korea by Wendy E. Simmons - Free Book Online
Authors: Wendy E. Simmons
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modern-looking dental equipment, at least as far as I could tell. Dr. So-and-So explained that the Great Leader himself insisted the room be built because “pregnant women want get teeth cleaned.” I guess women on the verge of giving birth, and those who have just done so, want nothing more than a cavity filled or a root canal performed. I asked how many women per day had their teeth cleaned in the room. “Many hundreds, but all come in the morning before you arrive,” Dr. So-and-So responded.
Next I’m shown the “Tanning Bed Room,” wide enough to hold two first-generation tanning beds and little else. Unlike the modern, cocoon-style beds where the “roof” is attached, the roofs of these beds hung down from the ceiling, high above their bottom halves. One bed was turned off or broken. The other, inexplicably turned on, cast an eerie purple-pink light across the otherwise dark room. Before I could ask, Dr. So-and-So quickly explained that their Dear Great Leader had the Tanning Bed Room installed because “pregnant women need Vitamin D when they must stay inside too long.”
We stop to visit a treatment room that is empty save for two paper-thin single beds that look more like examination tables. Each bed is made up with blue-and-white-striped sheets that are positively cheery in the otherwise drab and depressing room full of antiquated, chill-inducing medical equipment not seen since the start of the Cold War. Straddling the top half of either “bed” is a removable, plastic-looking contraption shaped like a half-dome, covered with the same matching sheets…a nice touch. When I ask Dr. So-and-So what the fortlike thingy is, she curtly replies, “Treat legs” and moves me along.
My love for Dr. So-and-So is beginning to fade a little.
In one “laboratory,” men and women who are dressed like pastry chefs sit dutifully staring at but not actually into microscopes that are still housed under their thick plastic covers.
It’s theater of the absurd, NoKo-hospital style.
When we stroll through the “patient” ward, door after door opens into one matching room after another, each as overflowing with antediluvian medical equipment as it is devoid of people. “The patients, they all go home,” Dr. So-and-So tells me, then adds—as if telling me one more time will somehow make it true—“Patients only come in morning.”
We take an elevator and emerge into a brightly lit hall, which I’m told is the lobby of a new hospital that’s been built adjacent to the old one next door. I feel like I’ve unwittingly entered and exited a time machine instead of an elevator. But that feeling doesn’t last for long, as it seems the upgrade is purely cosmetic.
We go down a flight of stairs, and I’m shown into a closet-size room, at the center of which is what looks like a modern mammogram machine. Dr. So-and-So tells me the machine is very expensive, more than 30,000 euros, but their Dear Great Leader wanted them to have it “for the health of our country.” Not too shabby of the big guy, I initially think, before it dawns on me: there’s only one machine to screen every woman in the country, and it’s not even plugged in.
I ask how one machine can possibly be sufficient? It’s like she’s not even trying to lie to me anymore when she blithely responds, “We do many exams.” Perhaps my concern is misplaced. After all, I haven’t seen a single female patient over the age of newly born, and I’ve been in the hospital for an hour.
While on the subject of preventing cancer, I asked Dr. So-and-So if doctors in North Korea collaborate or share research on breast cancer with doctors in other countries, since there’s been so much progress made. She has no idea what I’m talking about. I try again. “Do your doctors confer with other doctors or attend conferences, or read case studies about new treatments or results from clinical trials?”
“No cancer,” she says.
No cancer as in, “There’s no
Next I’m shown the “Tanning Bed Room,” wide enough to hold two first-generation tanning beds and little else. Unlike the modern, cocoon-style beds where the “roof” is attached, the roofs of these beds hung down from the ceiling, high above their bottom halves. One bed was turned off or broken. The other, inexplicably turned on, cast an eerie purple-pink light across the otherwise dark room. Before I could ask, Dr. So-and-So quickly explained that their Dear Great Leader had the Tanning Bed Room installed because “pregnant women need Vitamin D when they must stay inside too long.”
We stop to visit a treatment room that is empty save for two paper-thin single beds that look more like examination tables. Each bed is made up with blue-and-white-striped sheets that are positively cheery in the otherwise drab and depressing room full of antiquated, chill-inducing medical equipment not seen since the start of the Cold War. Straddling the top half of either “bed” is a removable, plastic-looking contraption shaped like a half-dome, covered with the same matching sheets…a nice touch. When I ask Dr. So-and-So what the fortlike thingy is, she curtly replies, “Treat legs” and moves me along.
My love for Dr. So-and-So is beginning to fade a little.
In one “laboratory,” men and women who are dressed like pastry chefs sit dutifully staring at but not actually into microscopes that are still housed under their thick plastic covers.
It’s theater of the absurd, NoKo-hospital style.
When we stroll through the “patient” ward, door after door opens into one matching room after another, each as overflowing with antediluvian medical equipment as it is devoid of people. “The patients, they all go home,” Dr. So-and-So tells me, then adds—as if telling me one more time will somehow make it true—“Patients only come in morning.”
We take an elevator and emerge into a brightly lit hall, which I’m told is the lobby of a new hospital that’s been built adjacent to the old one next door. I feel like I’ve unwittingly entered and exited a time machine instead of an elevator. But that feeling doesn’t last for long, as it seems the upgrade is purely cosmetic.
We go down a flight of stairs, and I’m shown into a closet-size room, at the center of which is what looks like a modern mammogram machine. Dr. So-and-So tells me the machine is very expensive, more than 30,000 euros, but their Dear Great Leader wanted them to have it “for the health of our country.” Not too shabby of the big guy, I initially think, before it dawns on me: there’s only one machine to screen every woman in the country, and it’s not even plugged in.
I ask how one machine can possibly be sufficient? It’s like she’s not even trying to lie to me anymore when she blithely responds, “We do many exams.” Perhaps my concern is misplaced. After all, I haven’t seen a single female patient over the age of newly born, and I’ve been in the hospital for an hour.
While on the subject of preventing cancer, I asked Dr. So-and-So if doctors in North Korea collaborate or share research on breast cancer with doctors in other countries, since there’s been so much progress made. She has no idea what I’m talking about. I try again. “Do your doctors confer with other doctors or attend conferences, or read case studies about new treatments or results from clinical trials?”
“No cancer,” she says.
No cancer as in, “There’s no
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