A hospital in Chongjin, the capital of North Korea’s North Hamgyong province, cremated a patient’s body without the family’s consent this month, after power outages disabled the morgue’s refrigeration equipment. The secret cremation came to light when a grieving relative arrived to collect the body and found it gone. The family’s outrage has since prompted a district party committee to open an investigation.
According to a source in the country recently, a family member visited the hospital on Aug. 8 to retrieve the body of a relative who had recently died. Instead, the visitor learned that hospital staff had already cremated the remains without telling anyone in the family. Hospital officials at first could not explain what had happened to the missing body. Under pressure from the family, they eventually admitted that staff had cremated it on their own initiative.
In North Korea, families typically retrieve a body soon after a hospital death and hold funeral proceedings at home or elsewhere. When relatives live too far away to collect a body quickly, hospitals sometimes store it temporarily in the morgue. The source said this is a common practice at the hospital.
The hospital’s refrigeration equipment, however, had stopped working properly for several days because of the recent power shortage. Bodies being held in the morgue began to decompose rapidly as a result. Hospital staff decided they could no longer preserve the remains and moved them to a crematorium instead.
Hospital blames family for the delay
Staff never sought the family’s consent before cremating the body. Nor did they explain that the equipment failure had left them unable to preserve it, or warn relatives to collect it quickly if they objected. The cremation proceeded quietly, and the hospital did not even inform the family afterward.
Once relatives learned what had happened, they confronted hospital leadership directly. They demanded that both the morgue’s manager and the hospital director explain why the body had been cremated without permission.
Rather than answer that question, hospital officials reportedly turned the blame back on the family. Staff argued the body had already been sitting in the morgue for five days and asked why relatives had not collected the body sooner. The hospital focused on the family’s delay instead of addressing its own decision to cremate the body without consent.
The family kept protesting, and the case eventually reached the district party committee, which is now looking into the matter.
The episode highlights a less visible cost of North Korea’s chronic power shortages. Blackouts are already known for disrupting medical equipment nationwide, but this case shows they can also create direct problems in how hospitals handle the dead.
Local residents who heard about the case have largely sided with the grieving family, according to the source. Many say cremating a body without notice or consent is wrong, no matter the circumstances.
“People understand, to some extent, that the hospital couldn’t run the refrigeration equipment because there was no electricity,” the source said. “But cremating a body without a word to the family is an entirely different matter, and there are complaints that the hospital handled the body carelessly.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime. We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication.
Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea — discovery means imprisonment or execution. This network-based approach allows Daily NK to report on developments other outlets cannot access: market trends, policy implementation, public sentiment, and daily realities that never appear in official narratives.
Maintaining these secure communication channels and protecting source identities requires specialized protocols and constant vigilance. Daily NK serves as a bridge between North Koreans and the outside world, documenting what’s happening inside one of the world’s most closed societies.
August 20, 2026 at 07:57PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)