Through Painstaking Efforts

Gingko tree is the sole “living fossil” among the plants which flourished up to the Cretaceous period in the Mesozoic era.

PhD and Associate Professor Mun Sang Mi, researcher at the basic Koryo medicine research institute of the Koryo Medicine General Hospital, succeeded in developing efficacious Koryo medicines from gingko leaves.

Having learned that gingko leaves have a special element for lowering blood pressure, she buckled down to research into them during her university days. She gave a scientific explanation to the pharmacological actions of gingko leaves through scores of tests and painstaking research. Then she played a pivotal role in standardizing the extract of gingko leaves and developed an injection for heart diseases from the leaves, for which she received the February 16 Science and Technology Prize in Juche 98 (2009).  

In September Juche 103 (2014) she won a prize at an international sci-tech seminar and exhibition held in China for her paper, titled, Study of Active Elements and Pharmacological Actions of Korean Gingko Leaves and Standardization of Patent for Their Products.

She intensified research, in the course of which she extracted another kind of active element from the extract of gingko leaves and developed various kinds of medicines with it.

Some medicines, which she prepared with the bark of Amur cork tree and the roots of kudzu vine and presented at the National Sci-tech Presentation and Exhibition in the Anti-epidemic and Healthcare Sector in 2022, were highly appreciated. She is now over 60 years old, but she is still working hard to develop more Koryo medicines.