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Tobacco Companies Target Girls In South Korea, Research Shows 

Tobacco marketing in South Korea has been deliberately aimed at girls and young women. New research has shown that transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) are using tactics long used with devastating effect in Western countries to snare new female smokers in Asia.

Kelley Lee from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine led a team of researchers who studied internal documents from the tobacco industry that reveal the scheme to seduce a generation of girls. She said, "Since the opening of the South Korean tobacco market in the late 1980s, females have been targeted by TTCs as an important source of future market growth and profitability. The rise in smoking rates among females within certain age groups since the late 1980s suggests that these efforts have been successful".

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