“…Recently, there have been efforts to grasp the reality by investigating refugees from North Korea instead of current residents of North Korea (Park, Kim et al 2014) or through the North Korean medical journals in the fields of internal medicine (Kim, Ha et al 2018, Ha and Lee 2019), pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology (Ro, Kim et al 2019) and psychiatry. (Kim and Jeon 2020) These attempts helped us understand the status quo of North Korea’s medical needs. For example, importance of non-communicable diseases in North Korea, which were underestimated got spotlights.…”