culture

Choe Un Ju is one of common household doctors working at the Songyo Polyclinic in Songyo District, Pyongyang.

However, she achieved a miraculous accomplishment others can hardly make.

Mun Hyon Suk, resident of Songyo-dong No. 1 of Songyo District who became able to walk again thanks to Choe’s efforts, recalled with deep emotion the days when she was under the devoted care of the doctor.

Choe struck up an acquaintance with Mun, who had been bedridden with an incurable disease, in June 2010 when she was assigned to the polyclinic as a doctor.

At that time, the doctor was 27 years old. While calling on each family in her charge to acquaint herself with the health conditions of the residents for the first time, she came across the gloomy atmosphere of a family. The boys were preparing a traditional medicinal decoction in their untidy kitchen badly requiring housewife’s care.

And then she was surprised to see a woman sitting with her back against the wall, leaning on a thick quilt, in a room.

She was just Mun Hyon Suk who had been diagnosed with polyradiculoneuritis at the age of 39 and completely paralyzed gradually.

The cause of the incurable disease was unknown and partial paralysis developed into complete one, threatening her life.

During conversation with the patient, Choe got to know that she had already given up treatment.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” the patient said assertively. Out of sympathy for her, Choe tidied up the kitchen and room until late at night and left the house, leaving the brief remark that she should not lose confidence, but keep receiving treatment.

“My heart was broken when a little boy held my hand and asked whether his mother could walk again,” Un Ju recalled.

She agonized over one question: Will it be impossible to treat her? One day, she revealed her agony to her mother who had worked as a doctor.

She greatly encouraged her daughter, saying that the power of human love is sometimes greater than that of medicine and that’s why they say the power of love is the greatest.

From the following day, she became a regular visitor to the patient’s house. Along with the treatment based on Western medicines, she applied the massage therapy drenched in sweat and acupuncture on certain spots.

Nevertheless, nothing changed in Mun’s health conditions even though several months passed.

Choe’s mother suggested combining acupuncture, massage and moxibustion with Koryo medicinal therapy good for activating cells. It was a great inspiration to her. She boiled dozens of kinds of medicinal herbs to extract substances good for curing palsy by activating nerves.

Thanks to Choe’s years of devotion, Mun gradually felt some pain and finally became able to walk step by step.

However, their joy did not last long. Mun’s illness took a sudden turn for the worse due to ill-defined heavy bleeding and pamplegia recurred, bringing the patient into the jaws of death.

She fell into a coma and Choe cried with the patient in her arms. All her devoted efforts for Mun seemed to have gone up in smoke.

But she buckled down to treatment again, as she saw Mun’s son, Jong Ryong, who had been rated as a talent at Pyongyang Middle School No. 1 volunteering to serve the army, instead of entering a university, to defend the socialist country, where there are many obliging people like the doctor, and the patient entrusting her life to her. 

As sincerity moves heaven, a miracle was wrought in Mun’s health at last.

Her fingers began to move one by one and her sensory nerves revived in the legs some months later. Last year, she became able to walk again.

“Dr Choe Un Ju spent 14 years of her youth, the prime of life, for me. She raised me up by devoting her love and the happiness of her family. Such miracle is possible only in our socialist country where human life is valued most and where the fine traits of helping and leading one another forward permeate society like air,” said Hyon Suk in tears.

Whenever the residents in Songyo-dong No. 1 and many colleagues congratulate her on her success and whenever journalists visit her for news coverage, Choe says modestly that she only tried to fulfil her duty as a household doctor.