Population with obesity, high blood pressure grows in 2011

The proportion of people in Korea's entire population with problems related to obesity and high blood pressure continued to grow last year while the number of people who regularly work out dropped, a government report showed Monday.

According to the report, jointly written by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the portion of people with illnesses related to high blood pressure and diabetes in the entire population of people aged more than 30 years came to 28.5 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively.

The figures respectively mark a growth of 1.6 percentage points and 0.1 percentage point from the previous year.

The number of people who regularly work out, on the other hand, shrank from 22.4 percent in 2010 to 19.3 percent last year, according to the report.

The report did not establish any direct link between the drop in the number of people who exercise regularly and the growth of people with obesity related illnesses here.

However, it did point to the excessive daily intake of sodium by an average South Korean as one of the possible reasons for the growing number of people with such illnesses.

The average daily intake of sodium by South Koreans was tallied at 4,800 milligrams in 2011, according to the report. The amount is more than double the maximum daily intake of 2,000 milligrams recommended by the World Health Organization.

The report, however, showed the country's overall smoking rate of people aged 19 years or older dropped 0.5 percentage points from a year earlier to 27 percent last year with that of adult males also declining 0.9 percentage points to 47.4 percent. (Yonhap)