According to a survey from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of men who smoke came to 39.3 percent in 2017, down 1.3 percentage points from a year earlier. The survey was conducted with 228,381 adults here.

The smoking rate has steadily fallen from 47.8 percent in 2008 to 40.3 percent in 2015, with exceptions in 2009 and 2016, the survey showed.

The smoking rate temporarily moved up to 40.6 percent in 2016 following a huge drop a year earlier due to an increase in tobacco prices.