South Korea: Smoking Down After Covid

The smoking rate in South Korea decline in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, reports The Korea Bizwire, citing figures from the Community Health Survey.

On Oct. 26, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) released the results of an analysis of changes in the Community Health Survey conducted before and after the pandemic.

The smoking rate among adults decreased by 1.8 percentage points, dropping from 21.2 percent before the pandemic to 19.4 percent after. The smoking rate for men also saw a decrease of 3.8 percentage points, going from 39.6 percent to 35.8 percent during the same period.

The KDCA utilized the average figures for the 2017 to 2019 period as the pre-COVID index and the data from 2020 to 2022 as the post-Covid index.