On October 6 the inauguration ceremony of the Pyongyang General Hospital was held with splendour on the shore of the picturesque Taedong River in Pyongyang, the capital city of the DPRK.

Addressing the ceremony, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un said that the construction of the Pyongyang General Hospital was really one of the strongest wishes he had wanted to fulfil, something that had always been at the forefront of his mind.

Over the past 10-odd years the DPRK has built or renovated many modern institutions and facilities that will contribute to protecting people’s lives and promoting their health.

They include the Breast Tumour Institute under the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital, the Ryugyong General Ophthalmic Hospital, the Ryugyong Dental Hospital, the Okryu Children’s Hospital, the Samjiyon City Hospital, the Myohyangsan Medical Appliances Factory, the Pyongyang Pharmaceutical Factory, plus medical supplies factories, specialized facilities for preventing diseases, standard pharmacies, etc.

To build a high-end, comprehensive health facility that can guarantee more safely the people’s health and lives was one of the plans Kim Jong Un had long cherished in his mind.

He initiated building the Pyongyang General Hospital and selected its site at the central part of the capital city. In March 2020 he attended the groundbreaking ceremony to dig the first spadeful of soil.

At the ceremony, he said: Our Party regards the people-first principle as its inherent nature and sacred political creed. So, protecting and improving the health of the people is a most pressing and honourable revolutionary undertaking, which it should shoulder and fulfil without fail, whatever the situation. Now, with the mindset that we are starting everything from scratch, we should take the first step in building our public health service into one that is people-oriented and advanced.

Early in July that year the 14th Enlarged Meeting of the Political Bureau of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea discussed it as an important agenda item to step up the construction of the Pyongyang General Hospital and take measures for the provision of the human, material and technical resources for medical service.

Later he visited the construction site of the hospital several times to learn about the progress of the project and provide instructions on hastening it.

When he visited the hospital nearing completion in September this year, he expressed his pleasure of greeting the day when one of his cherished desires was to be fulfilled in the long run, adding that the foundations of the country’s public health would change fundamentally if modern hospitals rise up in over 200 cities and counties across the country in the future and that the Pyongyang General Hospital would be recorded in the country’s history of construction in the new era as a brilliant monumental entity symbolic of the first year of the public health revolution led by our Party and the first substantial starting point of the public health development.

Under his guidance the hospital has been built as a hub of diagnosis and treatment, clinical research and dissemination, academic exchanges and expert training that can play a pivotal role in modernizing the public health sector and the country’s healthcare has been put on an incomparably advanced and modern basis.

Ham Yong Ju