Data from South Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance show that sales of cigarettes in the country fell 1.5% in 2018 from a year earlier.
A total of 3.47 billion packs were purchased last year, down slightly from 3.52 billion packs. One pack contains 20 cigarettes. Sales in 2018 also saw a 20.4% decline from 2014, which was the year before the Korean government raised the prices of cigarettes by 80% from KRW2,500 (US$2) per pack to KRW4,500. Later, in December 2016, the government started requiring tobacco companies to place graphic warnings on the upper part of both sides of cigarette packs.
Higher prices are not the only reason for the decline in sales of traditional cigarettes, however. Another contributing factor is the launch of heat-not-burn electronic cigarettes. Sales of traditional cigarettes fell 8.9%on-year in 2018, while sales of HNB electronic cigarettes jumped from 79 million packs in 2017 to 332 million packs in 2018.
The government collected KRW11.8 trillion in taxes from cigarette sales in 2018, up 5% from 2017.