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Members of the rock group Super Kidd participate in an antismoking campaign in downtown Seoul on July 9. / Korea Times |
By Andrei Lankov
Until recently, it was almost impossible to imagine a Korean male who didn’t smoke, if only on occasion. It is not incidental then, that the age long, commonly regarded symbol of Korean culture has been a smoking pipe.
Yet, its appeal didn’t resonate with everyone. Throughout the last hundred years or so, this country has seen three waves of anti-smoking movements, each having its own logic and pursuing its own goals.
The first of these three anti-smoking movements is not so well documented. Perhaps, in a stricter sense, it cannot even be regarded as a ``movement.” Rather, it was a gradual change in attitude toward female smoking.
Until the 1800s, Korean women smoked as much as men, which was seen as perfectly normal. But at some point during that time, the perception changed. It was assumed that smoking was not an appropriate activity for decent young women, even if ladies in their 40s were able smoke freely.
Smoking was seen as an activity carried out by ``loose women,” from professional courtesans to the liquor stall operators (the latter group was not seen as a paragon of chastity).
The available statistics indicate that female smoking was in decline from around 1900, if not earlier. In 1909, in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, 27.2 percent of all women smoked. It was well below the 57.1 percent level recorded for men, but still impressive if one compares it with the 1989 level of 7.6 percent, let alone with more recent statistics: in 1998, less than 3 percent of all Korean women smoked.
The second wave of anti-smoking campaigns took place in the early 1900s. These indeed can be described as ``campaigns,” since they were organized and had a defined set of political goals. But they had nothing to do with health issues. After all, in the early 1900s the authorities in the traditional herbal medicine trade still believed that tobacco was good for your health.
However, the missionaries and social reformers of the early 1900s saw smoking as a socially disastrous habit. It was associated with laziness and looked upon as a waste of time (indeed, in old Korea smoking often was an elaborate and lengthy ritual which involved much social interaction).
It was expensive, too. And it did not help that after the introduction of the tobacco tax in 1909, tobacco became a major source of revenue for the colonial administration.
In those days the growing national debt was used by the Japanese as additional leverage on colonial rule, and local patriots started a movement to repay the debt on the assumption that this would make Korea independent again. Nonsmoking was a way to save money for the program.
In February 1907, the Taehan Maeil daily ran a letter from two Korean nationalists who said: ``If 20 million Koreans refrain from smoking for four months, it will save 0.2 won per person. [Nationwide] this will produce 13 million won” (20 won then was a decent monthly salary of a white collar worker).
Antismoking campaigns continued well into the 1920s, every time conducted in the name of efficiency and saving. In some cases, campaigners insisted that smoking was alright as long as people smoked homegrown tobacco, not the cigarettes produced by the state-owned Japanese factories.
The modern, health-motivated campaign did not reach Korea until recently, even if the medical hazards of smoking have been known for decades. However, mass recognition of these dangers came only around 1990, when younger, better educated and more health conscious Koreans began to play an important role in the country.
It is also undeniable that the antismoking campaigns in the West did have an impact on Korea. Even if the new generations of Koreans were increasingly anti-American in their politics, they were eager to emulate the tastes and fashions of the American and Western elite.
From July 1976, Korean tobacco came with a warning _ and this was a standard worldwide practice. The early warning was not very hard on consumers’ minds, it said: ``for the health reasons, let’s abstain from excessive smoking,” as if only excessive smoking presented a health hazard. In 1989 the wording was made more dramatic, and from 1996 warnings had to be placed on both sides of the pack.
In the mid-1990s, smoking was banned on airplanes, trains and in the subway, underground areas, and elevators. In 2003, it was also banned in government buildings and offices, and primary, middle and high schools.
Korean smokers tried to challenge the ban legally, but lost. Some private companies also joined the drive, paying its employees special money if they quit smoking.
Two major Korean TV networks, KBS and SBS, banned scenes of smoking from their dramas _ an important step in a society so addicted to TV series. A third network, MBC, later joined the ban.
The third antismoking campaign proved to be very successful, and from the mid-1990s the number of smokers underwent a dramatic reduction. In 2003, an estimated 56.3 percent of Korean males smoked. This was the highest level among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
But it was well below the level of the 1980s when the proportion of smokers nearly reached 80 percent.
This reflects great changes in lifestyle of Koreans. Young Koreans have new ideas about how they want to live their lives. Those ideas are a driving force behind the recent success of antismoking activism, but they also contribute to the dramatic decline of the birth rate.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.
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