New research by a local hospital shows the incidence of breast cancer among young Korean women is decreasing.
Like many Asian countries, South Korea used to have a high percentage of breast cancer patients under the age of 40.
Samsung Medical Center analyzed some one-hundred-thousand breast cancer patients this year and found 15-point-five percent were under 40 years old, a decrease from some 30 percent in the 1990s.
This figure is expected fall to around five percent by 2020.
However, the number of patients with a type of breast cancer called Luminal A is on the rise in South Korea.
This type of breast cancer is generally more common in Western countries.
Researchers think the trend is associated with environmental factors such as increased fat intake, obesity and late childbirth.
