Smokers’ paradise: North Korea is now urging people to quit, though Kim Jong-un sets a poor example

North Korea, one of the last bastions of free, unhindered smoking, a country where just about every adult male can and does light up almost anywhere he pleases and where leader Kim Jong-un is hardly ever seen without a lit cigarette in his hand, is now officially trying to get its people to kick the habit.

It’s a battle Pyongyang has tried before and won’t easily win, especially since, beyond some stepped-up propaganda, it doesn’t appear to have a lot of funding. But this time around, the effort does have one big thing going for it: the increasingly vocal support of North Korean women, virtually none of whom smoke.

Ri Yong-ok, a 57-year-old pharmacist whose heavy-smoking husband nearly died of lung cancer, is leading the charge.

“I’ve been on TV, my whole family has been on TV, so everyone knows who I am,” said Ri, flanked by no-smoking posters, during an interview at the small anti-smoking centre she manages in Pyongyang. The centre, one of only 11 in all of North Korea, has something you almost never see in the North — a no-smoking sign placed prominently above its entrance.

“I’m optimistic that we can get people to stop,” she said. “Our goal is education.”