Frequently covered diseases in North Korean internal medicine journal Internal Medicine [Naegwa]-Secondary publication

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the distribution of research fields and diseases in the North Korean internal medicine journal by using a content analysis and a frequency analysis method. Methods: All 2,092 articles published in Internal Medicine [Naegwa], a North Korean medical journal, from the first issue of 2006 to the last of 2015, were searched and classified by subspecialty of internal medicines, diseases, and classification codes of the Korean Standard Classification of Diseases version 6. Results: In total, 1,392 out of the 2,092 articles were classified into the internal medicine field, with the remaining 700 classified as basic medicine, family medicine, or anesthesiology. Among the articles on internal medicine, most concerned the digestive system, followed by circulatory, respiratory, renal, and endocrine systems. Among the 700 articles in other fields, articles on gynecology were most common. According to the analysis of diseases, the most commonly studied in internal medicine were gastrointestinal diseases, hypertension, respiratory infectious diseases, glomerular diseases, and diabetes. Meanwhile, cerebrovascular diseases, herpes zoster, mental and behavioral disorders, and urinary tumors were most covered in the other fields. In the distribution by classification code of the Korean Standard Classification of Diseases version 6, circulatory and digestive diseases accounted for 42.4% of articles. Conclusion: The results of this study are expected to be exploited to estimate the disease distribution and disease burden in North Korea.