Tobacco Litigation and Transnational Tobacco Companies’ Componential Analysis of South Korea’s Tobacco Brands

Abstract

Tobacco litigation affects the implementation and development of comprehensive tobacco control policies and measures. Thus, it is certain that providing valuable evidence and information to tobacco litigation is a vital public health concern. Based on this, the present study searched and analyzed the formerly confidential documents of transnational tobacco companies that had penetrated South Korea since 1988 to investigate KT&G’s nicotine manipulation through additives. After liberalization in South Korea’s tobacco market, transnational tobacco companies initially went through difficulty in creating demand for their brands. To overcome this, the companies targeted the younger generation as their main consumer group, and developed distribution routes for their brands with cigarette vending machines. In addition, the study found that transnational tobacco companies conducted componential analysis of KT&G’s tobacco brands which dominated most of the market share at that time to develop similar brands to them. The result of componential analysis shows that KT&G’s brands include ammonia. Also, “lighter” cigarettes were found to contain almost as much tar and nicotine as “regular” brands. Once the first tobacco litigation occurred in 1999, KT&G immediately got in contact with its competitors, other tobacco companies to ask for their advice on tobacco litigation. The finding of this study argues that there is a possibility that KT&G’s tobacco brands included additives to help deliver nicotine quickly to the brain. Therefore, the current and future court for tobacco litigation should carefully take into consideration the tobacco additives and tobacco industry’s nicotine manipulation before making a judgment. More importantly, the study found that there has been collaboration between tobacco companies on tobacco litigation. Therefore, the court and public health experts should monitor tobacco industry’s tactics and practices while tobacco litigation is in progress.