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Maybe you shouldn’t trust North Korea’s version of Viagra

By
June 24, 2015 at 3:30 a.m. EDT

North Korea is a land of medical marvels – according to North Korea. Just last week, a pharmaceutical company announced that it had come up with a vaccine for MERS, a deadly virus for which there is currently no known cure or treatment despite considerable international effort.

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In fact, as The Post's Anna Fifield pointed out, the MERS vaccine was just one of a number of intertwined pharmaceutical advances made by the Hermit Kingdom. For obvious reasons, however, one triumph of North Korean pharmaceutical engineering has received more attention than most others: its  Viagra substitutes.

For example, one imaginatively named product named NeoViagra-Y.R. has been around for at least 10 years now, sold within North Korea but also exported to China and available online. Its producers, the state-owned Korea Oriental Instant Medicinal Center, say that it is not only a substitute for Viagra, but is in fact better than its Western rival.

“I hadn't had sex for three months," one customer quoted in advertisements said. "My sexual function normalized after I took four boxes of YR. I can promise that this is the magic medication of the 21st century.”

For one thing, it not only increases men's sexual prowess (lasting up to 24 hours according to one description, which sounds dangerous), but also claims to cure back pain, arthritis, hepatitis and many more aliements. Better yet, it works for women, too. And as if that wasn't good enough, there are no side effects!

The few online reports of the drug's effectiveness are not quite so positive, however. In 2005, Daily NK spoke to one Chinese trader who sold the drug. "Those who experienced the drug say that it doesn't have any effect, including side effects," he explained. The drug was also poorly manufactured, the trader said, with empty pill capsules and loose powder in the box.

It's unclear whether it got any better in the past decade. Song Jae-kyum of the Korea Pharmacy Network recently NK News that they were not really sure what was in the drug, which is labeled as saengyak or “herbal medicine,” and that it may well have side effects. Hopeful shoppers may have other options, however – another brand, Yangchunsamnok, is also sold in North Korea, and reports suggest that a North Korean company has come out with a new "Super Viagra" recently.

What explains the North Korean production of "Viagra?" Most likely, the answer is hard cash: Illicit sales of the drug probably provide hard currency for the sanctions-strapped North Korean state. Past reports have linked the North Korean state to arms trafficking and the sale of drugs such as methamphetamine. Selling some knock-off Viagra seems a relatively mild crime in contrast. Viagra-like drugs are also said to be popular with the North Korean elite, many of whom are approaching old age.

Even so, the medical properties of North Korea's Viagra knock-offs should probably be taken with a truckload of salt – as should its claims of a MERS vaccine.

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