Japanese & Korean Cigarettes

Japanese cartons are cheap in Japan and mid-priced abroad, and the gap is export cost rather than quality. At home […]

Korea is unusual for having a largely uniform national price. A pack of a mainstream brand costs roughly the same […]

Cheap by developed-market standards, expensive by historical Japanese standards. Both statements are true, and the tension between them explains a […]

Korea’s cigarette market is unusually concentrated: one manufacturer, KT&G, accounts for the large majority of domestic volume. That produces a […]

Mevius is the most internationally available Japanese brand and the volume leader at home. Whether it is good depends on […]

Korea is one of the cheaper developed markets for cigarettes, and the pricing structure is unusually simple: a single national […]

Japanese cigarettes have a devoted following outside Japan and a supply problem: the brands are only partly exported, the versions […]

Seven Stars occupies a position in Japan that is hard to translate: the premium full-strength brand, the one smokers graduate […]

ESSE is the cigarette most people encounter when they first try a Korean brand, and it is usually a surprise. […]

Japan’s cigarette market looks small from outside and is surprisingly deep from inside. A handful of brands account for most […]