One of the things that my mom and I had talked about is the height of Koreans. There is an image, perhaps a stereotype, that Asians are short.
This appears to have been true in the past.
Today walking around in any South Korean city, I think you can see the generational change in the heights of the people. Older people are about 5 foot tall, Those in their fifties are about 5 foot 5 inches (men) and as they get younger, they get taller. Teens today are my height or taller.
I’ve always assumed that the reasoning for this was because of the improving diets of children across generations. I recently found a couple of news stories that back up this idea (I’m not a scientist – perhaps it’s widely known that early childhood nutrition affects adult height).
The first article dealt with a story that today’s North Korean children are short. A sixteen year old boy is only 4 foot 7 and is seen as normal height, fit to serve in the army. The upshot of the second article was that North Koreans are shorter than their southern cousin, except for those over 50, who are equal in height. Which makes sense, 50 year ago, the country was wholly occupied by (or just liberated from) Japan so everyone had been being fed the same diet to that point.
The stereotype of the short Asian and the tall westerner is a thing of the past, at least in the places that I’ve seen. I’ve met many Koreans I have to look up to.
