[Yonhap News Photo ]
A steep hike in cigarette prices aimed at reducing smoking appeared to have worked merely for one year as cigarette demand has recovered this year.
In a regulatory filing Thursday, KT&G Corp., South Korea's state-run tobacco producer, posted an 11.9 percent rise in its second-quarter net profit.
The company's second-quarter net profit rose to 291.6 billion won (255 million US dollars) from 260.7 billion won a year earlier. Operating profit jumped 14.5 percent on-year to 354 billion won.
Second-quarter sales increased 5.4 percent to 1.08 trillion won. KT&G also reported a 14 percent increase in first-half sales, attributing the gain to a recovery in cigarette demand.
As part of an aggressive anti-smoking campaign, South Korea raised the average price of cigarettes by 80 percent to 4,500 won from January 1 last year. As a result, the smoking rate fell to 22.6 percent last year from 24.2 percent in 2014 while cigarette sales posted a 23.7 percent drop last year.
Anti-smoking areas have been expanded to include restaurants, office buildings, bus stops and many public places. On Thursday, the Constitutional Court upheld a smoking ban at all restaurants in a unanimous decision against a petitioner who argued the ban was unconstitutional.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
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