culture

There are children whose birth itself gives pleasure and attracts interest of the people.

They are triplets.

Before their birth the mothers of triplets are provided with health care service with special care of the government in the DPRK. After birth, the triplets receive gifts such as gold rings and ornamental silver knives and are provided with all conditions for health care. Only when they weigh more than 4 kilograms will they be discharged from the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital. The state is wholly responsible for bringing up triplets until they are four years old.

Such pieces of information are not new now.

But actual materials on triplets which are not well known to the people can be found in the childcare department of the Okryu Children's Hospital.

The department has several registers in which the health of triplets is recorded in detail.

According to Paek Hyang Ok, head of the childcare department, they record all the health conditions, nutrition and treatment of all triplets across the country from their birth to the age of 16, including height and weight. What is more surprising is that the medical team of pediatricians of hospitals at all levels gives medical checkups to the preschool triplets four times a year and those of primary, junior and senior middle schools two times a year and the screening results are synthesized at the Okryu Children's Hospital annually.

In the course of it, the hospital is familiar with the health indices of all triplets across the country at its fingertips and if anything happens in their growth and health, they are immediately committed to the provincial paediatrics hospitals and Okryu Children's Hospital for treatment.

And medical workers of the Okryu Children's Hospital visit the triplets across the country every year to examine their health.

This year alone, they visited the houses of several triplets, including 16-year-old triplets Ri Kang Song, Ri Tae Song and Ri Kuk Song, in Sowon-ri of Pyoksong County, South Hwanghae Province, to examine their health and look after them.

Their outreach programme includes all those in North Phyongan, South Hwanghae, North Hwanghae and Jagang provinces and other parts of the country.

Therefore, medical workers of the hospital, families of triplets and their villagers call the registers of the triplets' health a “unique certificate of happiness in our socialist home”.