Anti-smoking campaign begins

Former heavy smoker Huh Tae-won said Tuesday that smoking is not worth losing your health over, urging others to immediately quit smoking.

“I cannot walk for more than 50 meters as I become severely out of breath. Visiting the hospital emergency room almost every week has become a new normal for me,” said Huh, who smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day for the past 40 years.

“I only weigh 38 kilograms now as my muscles all shrunk after I was not able to exercise. I cannot go outside without abronchodilator and portable canned oxygen.”

Huh attended an anti-smoking seminar organized by the Ministry of Health and Welfare at the Korea Health Promotion Foundation in Seoul, a day before World No Tobacco Day (May 31), created by the World Health Organization in 1987 to draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic.

Huh was diagnosed in 2014 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a form of progressive lung diseases including emphysema, chronic bronchitis, refractory asthma and bronchiectasis. The disease is characterized by increasing breathlessness, wheezing, frequent coughing — with and without sputum — and tightness in the chest.

Starting today, the ministry plans to air a nationwide testimonial anti-smoking campaign in which Huh warns against the harmful effects of smoking. He is the third former heavy smoker to appear in the campaign after the late comedian Lee Joo-il who died in 2002 from cancer.

Smoking results in the rapid progress of lung disease, from which a patient can never fully recover, according to Konkuk University pulmonologist Yoo Kwang-ha.