The state-run National Health Insurance Service is considering filing lawsuits against cigarette companies to seek compensation for rising health costs from smoking-related illnesses.

Its president Kim Jong-dae told sources that tobacco companies should “no longer be free” of responsibility for smoking-related diseases that cost massive amounts of money to treat every year. In 2011, NHIS spent 1.56 trillion won to treat smoking-related diseases, he added.

The health insurance corp. also told the Korea Herald on Thursday that it would hold a forum with lawyers next week to “study” how much the treatment of tobacco-related illnesses costs its fund and to “check” whether the tobacco litigation is valid.

There have been a number of individuals filing lawsuits against tobacco firms in Korea. But this is the first time for a public office to consider suing both local and foreign cigarette makers.

In 2009, Gyeonggi Province filed a lawsuit against KT&G Corp., the country’s leading tobacco company, for compensation from cigarette-related fires. In an unprecedented case, the provincial government demanded 1 billion won from KT&G for fires that broke out between 2005 and 2007 in the suit filed with the Suwon District Court. But it lost the case in the first trial early this year.

Legal experts say the litigation value could amount to trillions of won because NHIS can claim for recovery of their tobacco-related health care costs for the last 10 years.

According to a research unit by NHIS, the medical cost of treating smoking-related diseases jumped 48.7 percent to 1.56 trillion won in 2011 from 1.05 trillion won in 2007. Among smoking-related illnesses, it took 377 billion won to treat patients with cerebrovascular disease and 347 billion won for hypertension in 2011, it said.

In 1994, more than 40 states in the United States filed lawsuits against the tobacco industry and settled the case with a payment by the companies of $246 billion.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)