High alert: North Korea's crystal meth epidemic
A crystal meth epidemic is sweeping North Korea as uninformed and unwitting users buy into the ‘medicinal’ drug’s cure-all properties, writes Simon Parry
A middle-class mother walks into the room where her 11-year-old daughter is wearily poring over textbooks as she prepares for crucial secondary-school entrance exams.
Taking care not to distract the child from her studies, mum gently strokes her daughter’s hair – and then hands her a glass of milk and a little something to help her stay awake.
The pick-me-up she lovingly administers to her daughter is rather more potent than a caffeine tablet or a spoonful of sugar: it is a dose of the highly addictive and potentially fatal drug methamphetamine, popularly known as crystal meth.
It is a scene that could have come from the imagination of the writers of Breaking Bad, the hit American television series that tells the story of a chemistry teacher who starts producing the illegal drug to provide for his family after discovering he has terminal cancer. But this real-life drama was acted out on the other side of the world, in a setting far removed from the fictional events in New Mexico. It happened in North Korea, in a town in North Hamgyong province, near the border with China, in the impoverished country’s rural northeast.
Within the secretive state, there appears to be an epidemic of crystal meth so widespread that, in some communities, more than 50 per cent of people are users, according to a report released by two Seoul-based academics who have interviewed defectors, including the schoolgirl’s unwitting mother.
Professor Kim Seok-hyang, of the Department of North Korean Studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University, says the mother’s account is far from exceptional. So little is known about the drug’s harmful effects in North Korea, and so many myths have developed about its medical benefits, that parents often give it to their children oblivious to the harm they may be doing.
“Most people in North Korea have no idea,” says Kim. “They think the drug is a good thing to relieve their pain. They see it as a cure-all medicine. They say, ‘I do not have enough medical treatment but if I take this methamphetamine it lessens my back pain, my headache.’” In small doses, crystal meth relieves pain and induces a feeling of euphoria and well-being.