North Korea(NK) is notorious for closed society. As the curriculum of medical school in NK has not been reported, we must rely on the refugee doctors’ witness for estimating their medical knowledge. The refugee doctors’ results of a trial examination could represent their medical knowledge.

Since 2013 year Kangwon National University School of Medicine(KNUSM) has managed the reeducation program for NK refugee doctors supported by ministry of unification of South Korea(SK) for 9 months. 12 NK refugee doctors joined us without payment. They were provided with special lectures and tutoring sessions. After the program, they took a trial examination in company with 54 third and 46 fourth grade medical students of KNUSM. We made a focus group interview for probing if there were hidden problems in our program.

There were significant differences in the total examination scores between 4th grade students, 3rd grade students and NK refugee doctors.(ANOVA ,p <0.05)

The difficulties of NK refugee doctors preparing for the examination were differences of medical terms; Latin for NK but English for SK,

The gap of medical knowledge between NK refugee doctors and medical students of KNUSM is too big to be overcome without their hard efforts and an elaborate reeducation program.

It is an urgent problem to interchange curriculums, technologies and professors between medical school of North and South Korea before unification of Korean peninsula.