JHUSON Associate Professor Miyong T. Kim, PhD, RN and colleagues have found there is a steeply increasing incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) in developing countries undergoing rapid westernization, including South Korea.
Their in-depth assessment of CHD?based on the 2001 Korea National Health and Examination Survey?concludes: “?contrary to the popular notion of relatively better coronary heart health status in Asian countries, the results of this analysis indicate that the overall coronary health of the adult Korean population is comparable to that of other developed countries.” Factors cited as contributing to the problem were poor management of high blood pressure, fairly high low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and a strikingly high smoking rate among men (61.6 %). Diabetes mellitus was also implicated.