[Intl-tobacco] N. Korea Campaigns Against Smoking (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

N. Korea Campaigns Against Smoking
Source: AP, Thursday, 8/3/00
Thursday, Aug. 3, 2000; 11:15 a.m. EDT

SEOUL, South Korea =96=96 North Korea, an isolated communist country known =
for
its belligerent rhetoric, says it has found a new enemy: cigarettes.

The Stalinist regime kicked off a "Week of No Smoking Campaign" on
Tuesday, North Korea watchers in Seoul said Thursday.

At the opening ceremony in Pyongyang, North Korea's health minister, Kim
Su Hak, urged North Koreans to "make the 21st century a century free from
smoking," said the North's foreign news outlet, KCNA.

In recent months, North Korean TV stations and newspapers have urged
people to quit smoking, said Chu Seok-yong, a North Korea watcher at
Seoul's Unification Ministry.

"Cigarettes are like guns trained on your hearts," Chu quoted an
anti-smoking slogan in the North as saying.

South Korean media recently reported that the campaign was ordered by Kim
Jong Il, who demonstrated his leadership by quitting himself.

Officials in Seoul say they don't know how many North Koreans smoke. But
many North Korean officials and journalists who have met their South
Korean counterparts were chain-smokers with nicotine-stained teeth.