북한에서의 제약시장 생성과 확대 요인

Abstract

This paper analyzes the factors of the creation and expansion of the pharmaceutical market in North Korea after the economic crisis of the 1990s in terms of ‘supply’. As a result of the analysis, the factors for the creation and expansion of the pharmaceutical market are as follows. First, the economic crisis led to paralysis of the operation of state-run pharmaceuticals, resulting in overheating of drug demand. This creates a pharmaceutical market by attracting state-owned pharmaceutical workers and individual merchants as suppliers. Second, as the demand for medicines increased, the pharmaceutical market attracted individual technicians to drug manufacturers (suppliers).Pharmaceutical manufacturing has led to the voluntary marketization of state-owned companies by deriving new markets centered on the region where the pharmaceutical industry base is established, and promoted market division and drug market development across the country. Third, the drug supply network gradually expands to the overseas market, which was the main reason for the health and medical policy that actively promoted the production of Oriental drugs.Initial capital such as facilities and materials is essential to produce Oriental Pharmaceuticals, which highlighted domestic medicinical herb exports as a source of earnng foreign currency.Various agents linked to China exported North Korean herbs and imported Chinese medicines in large quantities, resulting in the expansion of the pharmaceutical market. Since the inauguration of the Kim Jong-un administration, overseas joint pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies have entered Pyongyang due to market-friendly policies, and private pharmacies belong to the local governments are spreading. These phenomena implie that the fee-based drug supply is progressing in North Korea, and suggests the possibility of cooperation in the pharmaceutical industry where the two Koreas can coexist in the future. If South Korea imports high-efficiency North Korean medicinal herbs at low prices and invests in pharmaceutical equipment and technology in North Korea, the country will respond to the diversification of drug demand by developing domestic market and further entering the international market, and establishing domestic and foreign supply chains to cope with covid- 19, etc., are expected to be effective in inter-Korean cooperation.