Socialist Medicine Is Preventive Medicine

One day in October 1966 the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung met officials of the Ministry of Public Health. 

After acknowledging their greetings, he began to talk with them. After a while the topic turned to the cultivation of medicinal herbs. 

Noting that medicinal herbs grow well everywhere in our country, he said licorice is one of those that grow well in the country and therefore he had already talked about planting the herb on Rungna Island. He added that it would be good to plant it across the country.  

An official told him some clinics were growing medicinal herbs by themselves to satisfy their needs, while another official observed that a hospital was cultivating over 100 species of herbs and that this would probably be enough to meet their own needs. 

Pleased to hear that, Kim Il Sung said the public health sector should make efforts to prevent diseases in advance. 

What matters in socialist medicine is prevention; in other words it means taking measures to prevent the working people from falling ill, he said, stressing that socialist medicine is just preventive medicine. 

What he said on that day came to be published in his classic work "Socialist Medical Science Is Preventive Medicine".