Cigarettes kill 159 Koreans a day or 58,000 a year, a study claims, causing more than W12 trillion in socioeconomic costs (US$1=W1,238).
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Monday published the findings of a team of researchers at Seoul National University.
It attributes the deaths of 58,036 people over 30 in 2019 to smoking -- 50,942 men and 7,094 women -- which accounted for 32.3 percent and 5.3 percent respectively of the 290,000 total deaths in the age group.
By that metric, men who smoke are 1.7 times more likely to die before their time than non-smokers, compared to 1.8 times for women. But a study 24 years ago suggested that men who smoked were only 1.1 times more likely to die early than non-smokers, while the ratio was 1.3 times for women.
The researchers estimated the socioeconomic cost of treating sick smokers at W4.6 trillion and lost income at W7.6 trillion.
