North Korean traditional medicine factories are flooding Chinese border cities with herbal remedies as domestic demand collapses, with factories scrambling to secure cash for operations and employee rations after North Koreans rejected slow-acting treatments in favor of immediate-effect Western medicines.
According to Daily NK sources in China recently, traditional Korean medicines produced in North Korea, such as yeongsimhwan, Royal Blood-Fresh and cheonghyeolhwan, are available for sale in Dandong, Liaoning province, and Changbai, Jilin province.
In the past, medicines produced as souvenirs for foreign tourists had appeared in Chinese markets, but the variety and amount of traditional Korean remedies entering China have skyrocketed since the second half of the year, the sources said.
“North Korean factories now face the issue of operations, not construction,” one source said. “They can’t stop production, and if they’re to give their employees rations, they need to resolve the practical issue of securing cash, so they’re turning their gaze toward the Chinese market.”
Slow-acting herbal remedies lose appeal amid economic hardship
Products manufactured in traditional Korean medicine factories in North Korea mostly use dogberry, wormwood, milkvetch, angelica root, balloon flower and other medicinal herbs as their main ingredients. However, because these remedies take a relatively long time to demonstrate their effectiveness in improving one’s constitution or restoring the body’s balance, they have inevitably fallen out of favor with North Koreans.
“Here in North Korea, it’s unrealistic for people to take medicine for months or years due to economic conditions,” a source in North Pyongan province said. “In fact, people prefer Western medicines that have an immediate effect. They don’t really buy traditional Korean medicine made in traditional Korean medicine factories.”
For this reason, stocks of traditional Korean medicines produced for the local market pile up, and the factories that made them eat the raw material costs, the source said. This means factories ultimately have no choice but to break into the Chinese market.
In fact, factories have begun full-scale moves to secure cash by sending various kinds of products that are not consumed domestically to the Chinese market, using as a springboard the fact that certain products — such as angung uhwanghwan and angung sahyang — already enjoy some demand in the Chinese market.
“Traditional Korean medicine factories are scrambling to smuggle their goods to China, improving their packaging in addition to developing new products,” the source said. “Yeongsinhwan produced for the domestic market has been smuggled to China since the third quarter. At first, factories exported it ‘as-is’ to cover the production cost, but with demand in China growing, factories now export it after packaging it a bit differently.”
The mass appearance of yeongsinhwan in the Chinese market, made in pharmaceutical and traditional Korean medicine factories across regions such as Taechon, Yomju, Ryonghung and Tosong, appears to be an extension of this trend.
“Essentially, they unexpectedly found a market in China,” the source said. “Considering the current situation, it’s clear that the place that needs traditional Korean medicine isn’t North Korea, but China.”
December 23, 2025 at 06:40PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)