Nearly one in five women of normal weight were found to consider themselves obese, according to a new survey
A total of 18.9 percent of women of normal weight perceived themselves as obese, more than four times the 4.1 percent of men of normal weight who saw themselves that way, the Korean Society for the Study of Obesity said on Monday. The survey was conducted on adults aged 20 and older who participated in the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency’s Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2022 to 2024
The society used a person’s body mass index (BMI) to classify their weight status. A BMI lower than 18.5 is considered underweight; 18.5 to 22.9 is considered normal weight; 23 to 24.9 considered preobesity; 25 to 29.9 is considered Class 1 obesity; 30 to 34.9 is considered Class 2 obesity; and 35 or higher is considered Class 3 obesity
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Among women in the preobesity category, 66.9 percent perceived themselves as obese, more than twice the 31.8 percent of men in the category who answered the same
As a gap emerges between people’s actual weight and how they perceive their body shape, the use of obesity drugs has also risen rapidly
Mounjaro, an injectable obesity treatment, was prescribed 1.5 million times from its launch in Korea in August 2025 through May, data from the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service’s Drug Utilization Review (DUR) system obtained by People Power Party Rep. Han Zee-a showed
People in their 20s and 30s accounted for 52.9 percent of the prescriptions, or 794,781 cases
Concerns have been raised that while obesity drugs can be an effective treatment for patients with obesity, people of normal weight who use them for weight loss may face a higher risk of experiencing side effects
Additionally, safeguards against misuse and overuse, including duplicate prescriptions and dosage warnings, remain insufficient during the prescribing process. The DUR system issued 126,538 alerts involving duplicate Mounjaro prescriptions, but prescriptions were changed in only 7,331 cases, or 5.8 percent
BY KIM EUN-BIN [lee.taehee2@joongang.co.kr]
