The different cultural and regulatory regimes surrounding vaping and heated tobacco in South Korea were on display at the country’s first vaping expo.
Vape Korea Expo 2018, held at the Kintex exhibition hall in Ilsan, about an hour northwest of Seoul, served as a wholesale outlet for vaping products and ingredients and also a venue to show off heat-not-burn (HnB) devices.
Among roughly 90 occupied booths, 53 companies could definitively be identified as vaping-related enterprises. Only 10 were exhibiting HnB devices – half of them from China, and all of those from Shenzhen.
The Chinese contingent meant a greater representation of HnB products than might be seen at a vaping convention in many other countries.