• Yo Han Lee, Namkee Oh, Hyerim Kim, and Shin Ha.
• Graduate School of Public Health, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea.
• J. Korean Med. Sci. 2021 Mar 29; 36 (12): e25.

BackgroundLittle is known about the surgical discipline in North Korea from the perspective of the outside world. This study aimed to examine the disease entities covered by articles published in the major medical journal in North Korea, "Surgery."MethodsContent and frequency analyses of 2,132 articles published in "Surgery" from 2006 to 2017 were conducted. Two medical doctors who majored in surgery and anesthesiology perused the articles and compiled the diseases being elucidated in each article. The diseases described in each article were stratified into 13 surgical subspecialties.ResultsArticles from "Surgery," similar to articles from the Western surgical community, also covered a wide variety of surgical diseases from different subspecialties, and the number of publications continued to grow consistently. Moreover, a number of studies focused on the fields of orthopedics and general surgery dealing with benign diseases. Some articles focused on minimally invasive surgeries using laparoscopy.ConclusionThe studies published in the North Korean journal "Surgery" encompass various clinical areas, but their quality is unclear.© 2021 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.

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