Cigarette price hike tentatively agreed in South Korea

South Korea’s ruling and opposition parties have tentatively agreed to raise the tax on cigarettes by WON2,000 ($1.80) per pack next year, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

Under the agreement, cigarette prices would be pushed into a range that rose from about WON4,300 to about WON5,000 per pack.

The government announced in September that it would push to raise cigarette prices by 80 percent by January as one of its measures aimed at decreasing the country’s smoking rate among adult males to 29 percent by 2020.

The Health and Welfare Ministry has said that, in addition to the tax and price hike, it would like to see the introduction of a pricing system under which cigarette prices increased in line with inflation.

The most recent previous price hike was in December 2004.