What question did this study set out to answer?

To evaluate thematic and structural shifts in North Korean medical research before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using text mining of published article titles.

January 1, 2026Journal of Korean Medical ScienceOpen Access

Consistency in North Korean Medical Academic Research Topics During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Text Mining Analysis

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Authors

ELEun Hae LeeKorea University MCMinjae ChoiKorea University HPHanul ParkKorea University

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Implication

Text mining analysis reveals stable clinical research priorities in North Korean medical journals during COVID-19, suggesting limited systemic flexibility during health crises.

Key Points

To evaluate thematic and structural shifts in North Korean medical research before and during the COVID-19 pandemic using text mining of published article titles.
Extracted 8,818 paper titles from six major North Korean medical journals published across pre-pandemic (2017–2019) and pandemic (2020–2022) periods.
Conducted morpheme analysis, frequency analysis, word cloud visualization, and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling categorized by disease and healthcare service domains.
Infectious disease terms increased during the pandemic, but the overarching core structure of medical research topics remained essentially unchanged from pre-pandemic baselines.
Surgical intervention terms accounted for the largest proportion of topics overall, with LDA topic modeling identifying drug prescription and clinical care as core clusters.
COVID-19-related titles prioritized quarantine procedures and clinical management over laboratory basic science or vaccine development.

Cite This Study

Lee et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a9d9f476a03484b10bf12e3 https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2026.41.e227

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Implication

Text mining analysis reveals stable clinical research priorities in North Korean medical journals during COVID-19, suggesting limited systemic flexibility during health crises.

Consistency in North Korean Medical Academic Research Topics During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Text Mining Analysis

Discussion

Member takes

Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

Consistency in North Korean Medical Academic Research Topics During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Text Mining Analysis

Discussion

Member takes

Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

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