Korea's 2025 Tobacco Control Campaign Targets Youth Vaping

Key points:

1.The South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare has launched the first round of anti-smoking campaigns for 2025, focusing on the use of e-cigarettes among teenagers.

2.The package launches interactive promotional activities and online and offline communication mechanisms to enhance public participation.

3.The South Korean government plans to continue a series of anti-smoking advertisements targeting adult users in the future.

According to N.News on April 23, the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, along with the Korea Health Promotion Institute, announced that they will officially launch the first round of the 2025 anti-smoking campaign on April 24. The campaign will focus on preventing youth e-cigarette use and will include advertisements as well as community engagement activities.

The current campaign slogan, "Don't Touch e-cigarettes," conveys a double meaning of both "Don't use e-cigarettes" and "Don't bear the risks of e-cigarettes alone." It emphasizes the addictive risks and harmful effects of e-cigarettes on the health of adolescents.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare stated that the purpose of this advertisement is to break the "trendy image" created by e-cigarette marketing, by using scenes from the daily lives of young people to make them realize that using e-cigarettes is not "worthy of emulation", but rather a "shameful behavior".

According to the "Youth Health Group Survey" by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, over 60% of teenage e-cigarette users eventually switch to traditional cigarettes.

The advertisement primarily targets adolescents who are easily influenced by tobacco industry marketing, using a contrastive technique of animation (presenting a "mimicry-induced attractive image") and reality scenes (displaying a "real and shameful reality") to depict scenarios of teenagers smoking e-cigarettes in bathrooms or on building rooftops. Through visual impact, the ad aims to strengthen awareness, leading to self-denial and behavior inhibition, ultimately preventing such behaviors.

The current anti-smoking advertising campaign will run from April 24 to June 23 through online channels such as YouTube, social media, and OTT platforms, as well as outdoor advertising mediums like national study cafes and apartment elevators. Ground channel TV ads will be broadcast from May 1 to May 31.

Apart from advertising, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Health Promotion Development Institute have also launched a synchronous interactive online event titled "Don't touch e-cigarettes, e-cigarettes are not smoke-free living," encouraging young people aged 10 to 20 to expand the scope of their promotional efforts through participation.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to release the second and third rounds of anti-smoking television advertisements in the second half of this year. The second round of ads will target adult e-cigarette users to promote smoking cessation information, while the third round will focus on smokers who are willing to quit and encourage them to use smoking cessation support services.