Smoking Cost Calculator
How much smoking costs you.
Annual smoking cost
0 KRW
Enter how much you smoke and the pack price.
What is the smoking cost calculator?
Converting everyday cigarette spending into daily, monthly, yearly, and lifetime totals often reveals a surprisingly large amount. This calculator shows the real cost of smoking from just your daily amount and pack price.
How it is calculated
Daily cost = (cigarettes per day ÷ cigarettes per pack) × price per pack, then multiplied by 30 for monthly, 365 for yearly, and by years smoked for the lifetime total.
What a pack costs, and what quitting keeps
Most of a pack's price is tax and levies rather than the product. Counting only visible spending understates what smoking actually costs.
What sits on top of the price
A Korean pack carries tobacco consumption tax, local education tax, individual consumption tax and VAT, plus health promotion and waste levies — together more than 70 percent of the retail price.
Most of these are charged as a flat amount per pack, so the cheaper the product the larger the tax share.
The health promotion levy funds the health promotion account, which supports smoking cessation programmes and the health insurance system.
Spending is not the whole cost
Smoking raises the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disease and several cancers. Treatment costs and lost income never appear on the price of a pack but are incurred all the same.
Insurance differs too: some life and health policies apply a non-smoker discount, and a sustained quit period can qualify.
Second-hand smoke transfers the risk to those living alongside — children in particular show higher rates of respiratory infection and worsened asthma.
Support available on quitting
National health insurance supports cessation treatment, covering much of the cost of counselling sessions, nicotine replacement and prescription medication over a set programme, with completion refunds having been offered.
Public health centre clinics provide counselling and aids free of charge, and a national quitline helps build a plan and follows up afterwards.
Money saved is easy to overlook — cessation counselling often suggests transferring a day's pack price into a separate account so the figure stays visible.
Legal basis
- Tobacco taxes and levies — Local Tax Act, Individual Consumption Tax Act, National Health Promotion Act
- Cessation treatment support — National Health Insurance Service programme
- Public health centre clinics and quitline — Ministry of Health and Welfare
- Health effects — Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency