A teenage girl in Kaechon, South Pyongan province, collapsed in the street in early October 2026 after taking abortion pills. She had secretly bought the drugs at a local market without any prescription or medical advice. Her case shows how the stigma around premarital pregnancy is putting North Korean women’s health at serious risk.
The girl attends a senior middle school in Kaechon, a coal-mining city in the north of the province. She realized only belatedly that she was pregnant, a Daily NK source in South Pyongan province said on Wednesday. Senior middle schools form the top tier of North Korea’s 12-year compulsory education system. They are roughly equivalent to high schools in South Korea and other countries.
After she took the pills on her own, the bleeding would not stop and she collapsed outside. “She seems to have kept the pregnancy from everyone and tried to deal with it by herself,” the source said. “She collapsed not far from home, but luckily a neighbor found her and gave her first aid, which saved her life.”
Even after such a severe reaction, her family has focused on containing gossip rather than seeking outside help. “Her parents seem more worried about word getting out than about where she got the pills,” the source said. “If people learn an unmarried student became pregnant, both she and her whole family become the target of gossip.”
Stigma pushes North Korean women toward risky abortion pills
North Koreans routinely buy medicine at markets or from private drug sellers without a doctor’s prescription. The country’s free healthcare system has largely existed in name only since the famine of the 1990s. People now treat themselves with drugs from the jangmadang, the private markets that supply most daily needs.
People usually describe their symptoms to friends and neighbors to learn which drug might help them. Abortion is much harder to discuss openly, however, and the silence runs deeper for unmarried women. Kim Jong Un’s government also restricts abortion and has punished doctors who perform the procedure. Those moves form part of a broader push to reverse the country’s falling birth rate.
Society already judges pregnancy outside marriage harshly, and the judgment grows fiercer when the girl is a minor. Many pregnant teenagers fear that rumors will spread and that neighbors will shun their families. As a result, they rush to hide their condition and try to handle it entirely alone. That leaves them swallowing drugs they cannot identify in a dangerous gamble with their reproductive health. Unmarried women who give birth fare little better, since single mothers face deep discrimination and get no state support.
Medicine bought through informal channels gives buyers little way to know what it contains or what risks it carries. If side effects appear, the cause is hard to pin down, so patients often miss proper treatment. Many imported drugs sold in North Korean markets appear to come from India and Pakistan. Buyers often know little about these products beyond what the sellers happen to tell them.
The risks of such secrecy have proved deadly in the past, according to earlier Daily NK reporting. An unmarried woman in her 30s died after an abortion at a doctor’s home in Hamhung, where no emergency care was available. Authorities have also launched a crackdown on unmarried couples living together, calling it decadent capitalist culture. That campaign has only deepened the shame that surrounds relationships outside marriage in North Korea.
It remains unclear which drug the Kaechon student took or whether she received proper medical treatment. Her family wants to keep the matter from outsiders, so the full story may never come out. Like many similar incidents before it, the case will likely fade away quietly, the source said.
“This case shows how society’s view of pregnancy outside marriage leaves women more vulnerable,” the source said. “Similar cases could keep happening, so women urgently need a way to get medical help without fearing condemnation.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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