Background:
To identify a trend of smoking scene exposures in popular movies among the Koreans and to investigate where and when the smoking scenes were appeared.

Methods:
One hundred commercially successful movies from 2006 to 2015 were selected from Korea Film Council's Database. Ten monitoring teams watched the selected movies to collect data following the structured questionnaire which was developed by the authors.

Results:
There were 5 G, 47 PG-13, 37 R and 11 NC-17 rated movies among the selected movies. The total smoking scene exposures in 100 movies during the past 10 years was 618. Almost 45% (276 scenes) of the smoking scenes was exposed in the R rated movies, while 20.6% (127) was exposed in the PG-13 rated movies. There were on average 2.7 smoking scene exposures in a PG-13 rated movie and 7.5 smoking scene exposures in R rated movies. Smoking scene exposures in the movies that youth could watch (PG-13 and R rated movies) has increased almost 50% from 42 times in 2006 to 64 times in 2015. One third of the smoking scenes (123 out of 372) was shown without any relevance to the storyline of the movie, while almost 17% of the smoking scenes were when actors faced stress, death of a loved one or divorce. Worry, violation, break time or drinking alcohol were other situations where smoking scenes were shown. Thirty-five percent of smoking scenes (135 out of 379) showed actors smoking in non-smoking areas, including schools, restaurants or public places, while 15.6% and 8.7% of the smoking scenes took place in the home and street, respectively.

Conclusions:
Global and domestic efforts to achieve de-normalization of tobacco use in real life can be undermined by smoking scene exposures in movies. Monitoring and protecting youths from smoking scenes in PG-13 and R rated movies are needed.