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Height Differences in North and South Koreans

by Richardson ~ November 20th, 2006. Filed under: Economics, Human Rights, Hunger & Famine.

Update: The Dong-a has an editorial on this subject: Tall South, Short North.

Original Post: Height statistics for 1,075 North Korean defectors ranging in age from 20 to 39 were compiled by the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention, while equivalent South Korean statistics were obtained by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Both organizations collected the information in 2005. The results should not be surprising, unless it’s the fact that the differences aren’t even more pronounced:

	North Korea	South Korea
Males	165.6cm (5′ 4.5″)	172.5cm (5′ 8.5″)
Females	154.9cm (5′ 1.0″)	159.1cm (5′ 3.5″)

The article does not specify if the North Korean sample selected defectors to represent all of North Korea, which could skew the results as the provinces bordering North Korea – Hamgyong Bukdo, Hamgyong Namdo, and Ryanggang – have typically had “the highest prevalence of underweight children.”

As conditions in North Korea are unlikely to change soon, the trend will continue:

The physical gap may be widening, experts here worried. Chung Woo-jin, a professor at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of Public Health, said the height difference between men of the two Koreas could be more than 11 centimeters by 2025, with a 6-centimeter difference in women’s height. He also said South Koreans’ body type is becoming “Westernized,” with longer legs, while North Koreans are developing longer upper body parts.

[. . .]

Experts worried that the height difference could be a barrier in integrating the two Koreas. “The hardships that North Koreans suffered will be portrayed in their heights, and their social status here could be easily detected by eye after unification,” Mr. Chung said.

And this is not a newly noticed phenomenon:

At 16, Myung Bok is old enough to join the North Korean army. But you wouldn’t believe it from his appearance. The teenager stands 4-feet-7, the height of an American fifth- or sixth-grader.

[…]

South Korean anthropologists who measured North Korean refugees here in Yanji, a city 15 miles from the North Korean border, found that most of the teenage boys stood less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.

The height disparities are stunning because Koreans were more or less the same size — if anything, people in the North were slightly taller — until the abrupt partitioning of the country after World War II.

[…]

Foreigners who get the chance to visit North Korea — perhaps the most isolated country in the world — are often confused about the age of children. Nine-year-olds are mistaken for kindergartners and soldiers for Boy Scouts.

“They all looked like dwarfs,” said Kim Dong Kyu, a South Korean academic who has made two trips to North Korea. “When I saw those soldiers, they looked like middle-school students. I thought if they had to sling an M-1 rifle over their shoulders, it would drag to the ground.”

To the extent that they ever get to meet South Koreans, the North Koreans are likewise shocked. When two diminutive North Korean soldiers, ages 19 and 23, accidentally drifted into South Korea on a boat, one reportedly was overheard saying they would never be able to marry South Korean women because they were “too big for us,” according to an account in the book “The Two Koreas,” by Don Oberdorfer.

The soldiers were repatriated to the North at their own request.

[…]

The North Korean military had so much difficulty finding tall-enough recruits that it had to revoke its minimum height requirement of 5-feet-3. Many soldiers today are less than 5 feet tall, defectors say.

[…]

The issue of IQ is sufficiently sensitive that the South Korean anthropologists studying refugee children in China have almost entirely avoided mentioning it in their published work. But they say it is a major unspoken worry for South Koreans, who fear that they could inherit the burden of a seriously impaired generation if Korea is reunified.

“This is our nightmare,” anthropologist Chung said. “We don’t want to get into racial stereotyping or stigmatize North Koreans in any way. But we also worry about what happens if we are living together and we have this generation that was not well-fed and well-educated.”

7 Responses to Height Differences in North and South Koreans

Bob Walsh
November 20th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
The damage is done.

I would take exception to Prof. Chung’s use of the term “westernized” in referring to the change in body morphology of South Korean young people. I think what’s happened is what happens everywhere when people have an ample diet with enough of the right nutrients, -they reach their full physical potential, as dictated by genetic makeup and environment.

Compare these kids with their own parents and grandparents and you’ll pretty quickly get a grip on what decades of living lean can do to a population. Just looking at family group photos would bear this out.

I recall seeing old pictures taken by missionaries back in the 1890’s, and remarking on how tall and well-built the Koreans seem to have been before the race underwent the tender mercies of occupation and war.

By comparison, you have Japan, where several generations of young people have enjoyed a decent diet; they are not getting any taller or better built; they’ve reached their maximum potential.
Richardson
November 20th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
I agree on your exception - more nutrition through some Western foods is still nutrition, not something Western.

The real tragedy, for survivors, is in the last two paragraphs, I think. Korean society is already merciless enough concerning appearance, but stunted minds will be even worse.
James J. Na
November 20th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
they would never be able to marry South Korean women because they were “too big for us,”

I think that goes for both height AND weight. There is a growing number of obese youth in South Korea.

As far as North Koreans go, I have long argued that when the inevitable reunification comes, North Koreans will become a permanent underclass:

When discussing the topic of North Korea-South Korea re-unification, often the subject of assimilating heavily indoctrinated North Koreans into the capitalist South Korean society comes up.

It is widely recognized that the economic and cultural disparity between North Koreans and South Koreans is substantially greater than that which divided East Germans and West Germans before the German re-unification. Yet the persistent stereotypes of Ossies versus Wessies are found still (former East Germans are purported to be lazy and expect handouts from the government whereas former West Germans are allegedly greedy, selfish and arrogant).
Here is an article that perhaps illustrates another cultural difference between the North and the South regarding violence (link found through Flying Yangban):

Indeed, Northerners are different from the Southerners in their willingness to resort to force in confrontation. For a long time, I thought that it was my subjectivist and probably unreliable impression, but in recent years, as Southerners have been exposed to the defectors from the North on much greater scale, a number of them have developed the same feeling.

Over the last few years North Korean defectors have been required to undergo a mandatory crash course in Southern ways of life. This course is run by a special training center known as Hanawon. This centre acquired a notorious reputation due to violent fights between the students. In some cases staff members were attacked as well — something unthinkable in the South with its ingrained reverence to teachers and social superiors! When I heard about it I was not surprised. Nowadays defectors do not come from elite, as was the case until the mid-1990s. They represent a cross-section of the North Korean population, including commoners, and these people are ready to use their fists when they deem necessary.

This is perhaps yet another reason why South Korean political and economic elites have talked up re-unification but rarely took any step toward it (not that North Korea has been all that helpful in that regard): they are fearful of what would happen to South Korea’s economy, should it have to absorb North Korea. This isn’t merely an issue of dollars and industrial infrastructure. There is a real likelihood of the North Korean population turning into a permanent underclass in a unified Korea, with all the social turmoil that would accompany such a process.
Mark
November 21st, 2006 at 7:03 am
This news will shatter the dreams of the K-aryans who want to create Lebensborn Kinder by breeding with North Korean comfort women.
Pelagius
November 21st, 2006 at 3:21 pm
“Northerners are different from the Southerners in their willingness to resort to force in confrontation.”

Uh-huh. Tell that to an American witnessing any one of the bloody battles between stick-wielding students and baton-wielding riot police on display every spring in Seoul.
iop
May 25th, 2007 at 12:34 am
just saying, ethnic koreans in china have a higher percentage of haplogroup c while South koreans have a higher percentage of haplogroup o. Ethnic koreans in China come from North korea so there is a genetic difference between the two Koreas.
Sonagi
May 25th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
“I would take exception to Prof. Chung’s use of the term “westernized” in referring to the change in body morphology of South Korean young people.”

So would I. Westerners aren’t the only nationalities noted for tall bodies with long limbs. Well-nourished people from the northern region of the South Asian subcontinent, i.e. Pakistanis, northern Indians, and Afghans, are often tall with very long legs; so are some African ethnic groups like the Maasai. Early European settlers described the Native American tribes they met on the east coast as tall and muscular. The occidentalism of Koreans is a little troubling sometimes.