The percentage of men in their 20s and 30s who smoke dropped nearly 20 percentage points from 2015 to 2024, though the figure does not include users of e-cigarettes and other alternative tobacco products.
About 28.5 percent of men in their 30s and 22.6 percent of men aged 19-29 were cigarette smokers in 2024, according to a report by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The smoking rates of these two groups marked the biggest declines out of all age groups, by 19.5 percentage points and 16.1 percentage points, respectively.
Men in their 40s had the highest smoking rate for cigarettes, at 36.9 percent, down from 45.8 percent over the same period. Some 34.1 percent of men in their 50s smoked them in 2024, which was down by 2.4 percentage points.
But the rate rose slightly for men in their 60s, to 26.4 percent. The figure for men aged 70 and above was 13.5 percent, down from 17 percent over the same period.
However use of tobacco has not declined as much when including alternative products. About 40 percent of 30-something men used tobacco, down by 4.9 percentage points compared to 2019, less than half of the 10.7 percentage point drop for cigarette use.
South Korea started tallying the usage rate for all tobacco products in 2019, with an increasing portion of smokers using e-cigarettes.
A similar trend was seen for younger men, with cigarette use dropping by 15.2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024, but the overall tobacco usage rate decreasing by 10.5 percentage points in the same period.
For men in their 40s, the heaviest smoking group in terms of usage rate, use of tobacco-related products increased by 1 percentage point from 2019 to 2024 while cigarette use decreased by 1.6 percentage points.
It is widely believed in South Korea, particularly among the younger population, that e-cigarettes are less harmful than cigarettes. A September survey of elementary, middle, and high school students showed that 32.2 percent of the respondents thought that e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes or not at all harmful.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
