A few days ago, the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDC) released a report about the obesity rate in South Korea, and, in my opinion, without having compared with other countries, the results look quite bad, specifically among men.
The report explains that 48.8 per cent of Korean men are obese, with the worst group being the men in their 40s, reaching 61.7 per cent. For me, this is absurdly high, but considering that someone is obese, they took the standard for asian ethnicity following the guidelines by the WHO, being an IMC of 25. This is stricter than other ethnicities, so you should take into consideration that when comparing countries’ data.
However, for women, the data is better, the obesity rate is ‘only’ 26.2 per cent. I assume that could be because women care more about beauty, and the K-beauty standards are quite strict. Anyway, this is a personal opinion maybe they should research this to try to fix the problem.
Also, another concerning problem is smoking, with a huge gap between genders. For men, 36.7 and 6.9 per cent per woman. Personally, I can feel that gap much more than the obesity one. If I look among my colleagues and even in smoking areas you can notice quite early that there are many more men than women. In my case, I am not a smoker and have never been, so I guess that I don’t follow this.
Anyway, these statistics are always a good reminder that health is the most important and fragile, as we only have one body. Remember to eat healthy and do regular exercise to keep a good body. Don’t need to do anything very special or extreme, just this and not smoking will do a lot to stay healthy.
Source. The Korea Herald.
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In Korea men don’t care about their appearance that much compared to women. And they have bad diet and lifestyle. Smoking and drinking more common among men than women. Nowadays, especially for young women their role model is skinny idols and celebrities. 😏😅