South Korea’s health authorities said Monday they plan to conduct research on cigarettes with flavor capsules, which are becoming increasingly popular with Korean smokers, to determine if they contain harmful substances.

Smokers can crush the flavor capsules embedded in cigarette filters to add flavor, primarily menthol, to the smoke they inhale. During the first three months of the year, some 1.05 billion cigarettes were sold in Korea.

“We still don’t know a lot about these cigarettes and whether or not they contain harmful substances that are harmful to the human body,” said a Health Ministry official. “We are doing this research because such flavors can especially attract teenagers.”

The research findings are scheduled to be published next year.

Korea is home to almost 10 million smokers, and an estimated 57,000 die each year due to smoking-related diseases including lung cancer. Last year, it had one of the highest smoking rates for adult males among OECD nations at 43.7 percent, surpassing the OECD average of 26 percent.

The National Assembly last year approved an 80 percent increase in the price of cigarettes in an effort to curb smoking. The new bill took effect on Jan. 1.

One of its main goals of the research is to determine if local tobacco makers use additives, such as ammonia, sugar and cocoa beans, to make their products more addictive, officials said.

Sugar, for example, is known to generate aldehydes when pyrolyzed. The combination of aldehydes and nicotine is known to be more addictive than nicotine by itself.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)