What is the “ghost disease” that North Korean defectors are talking about?

In Gilju County of North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea's nuclear test site is located, local residents are haunted by a "ghost disease." Nuclear tests have caused abnormalities in the health of people living near the test site, but the exact cause is unknown. As many as six nuclear tests were conducted at the Punggye-ri test site between 2006 and 2017. The North Korean authorities have never warned or evacuated local residents in advance of these tests.

Residents of Punggye-ri and the surrounding area have reported unexplained pain, vomiting, low white blood cells, nosebleeds, cancer, respiratory problems, and even death. “Radiation destroys the body's immune system, which is why it cannot be diagnosed in regular hospitals,” medical experts said. In fact, according to defectors, local North Koreans in Gilju often visit shamans because although they are in severe pain, doctors can not find the cause. “In Gilju, if you get sick, you go to a shaman who refers it to a ghost disease,” said a female defector who had lived through three nuclear tests before she left Gilju.

"I was frustrating that although I had a pain all over my body as if it was poked with a knife and I suffered from insomnia, I couldn’t find out the cause from the hospital," said another North Korean defector from Gilju County who had lived through three nuclear tests.

"When I was in Gilju, I heard doctors at the hospital saying that they didn’t know why there were so many liver and stomach cancer patients in Gilju," said a North Korean defector from Gilju who had lived through all six nuclear tests in the area before she defected from the country in 2019. "I, too, suffered from palpitations of the heart and headache and still take sleeping pills because I can't get sleep."

North Korean soldiers who had served at the test site also testified that they were exposed to radiation. "When I was hospitalized in Gilju in 2014, a friend of mine, who was lying next to me, told me that his son-in-law had worked at the nuclear test site in Punggye-ri as a private first class and was given a special promotion to a second lieutenant and honorary military certificate upon discharging from the army, but he was not “able to leave his posterity.”

"I suffer from depression, teary eyes, headache, bone pain, and pain in the chest. But, I can't be diagnosed with anything at the hospital," Kim Eul-jin from Gilju, who experienced up to the sixth nuclear test and defected in 2019, complained.

In particular, some defectors testify that tuberculosis, which used to be called the ‘voracious disease’ because it was easily cured when one eats well, has led to death after the nuclear tests no matter how well one ate. "My son died of melted lungs due to tuberculosis in 2017 in Gilju," said Lee Young-ran. "I heard that several friends of his with the similar ages in Gilju also died of melted lungs," she said. "I also have gas in my stomach, and I am out of breath when I have a meal," she added. “I had a headache and took a blood test twice. My doctor was surprised to find out that my white blood cell count was so low.”

Another native of Gilju who left North Korea in 2019 said, "Since 2013 when the third nuclear test was conducted, every one in two households in Gilju suffered from indigestion." "I felt bad for no reason, sometimes I had a headache, my heart fluttered, and I felt like being poked with needles," she added. "The same symptoms have continued even after I arrived in South Korea."

One who was born in Punggye-ri and lived through the third nuclear test before defecting in 2014 said, "I have a headache to start with and my nose bleeds anytime." "Especially in the evening, I can't even lift a finger because I feel dead tired, and I collapse," he added.

Kim Myungsung/SAND Secretary General