One out of every 20 Koreans is a cancer patient...Thyroid cancer is the most common.

[Anchor]
One out of every 20 Koreans is a cancer patient.

Also, our people had thyroid cancer the most, men had lung cancer and women had breast cancer the most.

Reporter Kim Joo-young reports.

[Reporter]
Cancer has become such a common disease that everyone has a family member or friend who is treated for cancer.

It ranges from patients who have met a well-suited treatment and are close to being cured to patients who are fighting the disease with all their might.

[Mr. Kim / Biliary tract cancer patient: (treatment) expensive. I paid about 100 million won (so far). At first, I said I wouldn't do it because it was too expensive.]

[Mr. Moon / Breast cancer patient] I'm in such a good condition right now. I go to the mountain every day to exercise....]

In fact, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of cancer patients in Korea was 2.588 million as of January 1, 2023.

In other words, one out of every 20 people had cancer.

If the scope is narrowed to people aged 65 or older, there are about 1.3 million people, and one out of seven was a cancer patient.

The number of new cancer cases in 2022 was about 282,000, similar to that of the year before, but it showed a slight increase in men and a slight decrease in women.

Assuming that both men and women live to life expectancy, the probability of cancer was 37.7% for men and 34.8% for women, which was slightly higher for men.By type of cancer

, thyroid cancer was the most common among men and women, followed by colon cancer and lung cancer.

When divided by gender, men had a high rate of lung cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer, while women had breast cancer, thyroid cancer and colon cancer in order.

However, the 5-year survival rate of cancer patients is steadily improving to 72.9%.

I'm Kim Joo-young of YTN.