Prevalence, correlates of and perceptions toward cigarette smoking among adolescents in South Korea

To estimate the prevalence of current smoking, correlates of smoking and assess exposure to and perceptions towards smoking by gender.

We used data from the South Korea Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS). Frequencies of selected characteristics and their 95% confidence were obtained. Current cigarette smoking was defined as having smoked, even a single puff, within the last 30 days. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the factors that were considered to be associated with current cigarette smoking in bivariate and multivariate analyses.

Of the 5615 respondents, 7.4% males and 5.0% females reported being current smokers (p = 0.003). Having smoking friends was strongly associated with smoking after controlling for age, gender, parental smoking status, exposure to anti-smoking media messages, and perception of risks of smoking (OR=69.92; 95% CI [41.24, 118.57] for most friends and OR=11.86; 95% CI [7.26, 19.36] for some friends). Male gender and having one or both smoking parents were associated with smoking (OR=1.43; 95% CI [1.09, 1.89] and OR=1.29; 95% CI [1.00-, 1.71] respectively). Exposure to antismoking media messages was negatively associated with smoking (OR=0.52; 95% CI [0.36, 0.77].

Prevalence of smoking among adolescents in South Korea is lower than in many other Asian countries. There is however, need to strengthen anti-tobacco messages especially among adolescents.