Smoking in North Korea
However, according to the KCNA, the state news agency of North Korea, the Supreme People's Assembly has introduced smoking bans in some public places to provide citizens with "hygienic living environments".
In general, North Koreans tend to prefer strong tobacco and different classes of quality range from homegrown to sought-after foreign brands that are considered status symbols.
As a percentage of the available arable land compared to consumption, the tobacco crop is over-represented in North Korean agriculture.
[3] It is estimated by the World Lung Foundation and American Cancer Society's The Tobacco Atlas (2019 data) that 43.6% of men, 4.5% of women, nearly 2.4% of boys and 5.1% of girls (aged <15) are daily smokers, with the average smoker (data is likely skewed towards males due to the higher prevalence of smoking in this group) smoking an average of 609 cigarettes per person per year.
[7] On average, people who live in urban areas tend to smoke more cigarettes per day than rural farmers.
[9] The high rate of smoking in South Korea is possibly due to it being a capitalist society, where marketing is prevalent and consumption is uncontrolled.
[15] Kim Jong Il has called smokers one of the "three main fools of the 21st century", along with people who do not understand music or computers.
[16] The current leader Kim Jong Un is often seen smoking in public,[17] including in university classrooms, subway carriages, and in the presence of his pregnant wife Ri Sol-ju,[18] facts that "might make the life of the North Korean health educators more complicated.
"[14] While discussing any negative aspects of the leaders has normally been rare, some North Koreans have recently raised the issue of the apparent contradiction between anti-smoking measures and Kim's public image with foreigners.
[19] Western brands, particularly American, but also Chinese, Russian and Japanese[6][20] are popular with the elite and preferred over domestic cigarettes.
[20] Foreign cigarettes and the domestic 7.27 brand, whose name stands for 27 July, the date of the Korean Armistice Agreement; are veritable status symbols.
[8] as of 2021[update] mortality figures indicate that 14.2% of North Koreans die due to smoking-related causes, which is the 6th highest rate after China, Greenland, Kiribati, Denmark and Micronesia.
[27] North Korea has set up specific government objectives for tobacco control and there is a national agency to implement them, with eight full-time staff members.
[29] In addition to regular healthcare clinics, there are eleven specialized anti-smoking centers in the country where consultation is free, but medicine is not.
[17][25][31][32][b] However, smoking is not prohibited in either private or work vehicles or on-board trains, at bus stops, near entrances to buildings, in universities, government offices, workplaces, restaurants, cafes, bars, or nightclubs.
British American Tobacco also has business in the country, but it has reduced its involvement due to political pressure and public relations reasons.
[16] During the Cold War, North Korea paid for goods it imported from the Soviet Union with poor quality tobacco.
[19] There are some privately owned tobacco factories, some of which are known to produce counterfeit brand cigarettes for export as part of North Korea's illicit activities to earn hard currency.
