‘A Nation of Racist Dwarfs’
The title of today’s post is lifted from Christopher Hitchens’ essay from 2010 which I mentioned in my previous blog. Catchy isn’t it? And not a little racist, which is rather rich in that The Hitch makes a special point of describing North Korean as racist and xenophobic. He writes with authority that “a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean”, and goes on to invite us “to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.”
This data is shocking because while North Koreans got shorter, South Koreans got taller. But six inches (15.24 centimeters)? Are North Koreans (Hitchens doesn’t specify if he refers to a male or female) really that much shorter? The simple answer is no.
They are defintely shorter, but not nearly so much as Hitchens specifies. In 2002, the South Korean Research Institute of Standard and Science used United Nations survey data collected inside North Korea, and found that pre-school children raised in North Korea were up to 13 cm (5.1 inches) shorter and up to 7 kg lighter than children brought up in South Korea. Commentators put this down to the famine of the 1990s, which left one in every three children in North Korea chronically malnourished or 'stunted'. In 2006, the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed the physical condition of 1,075 North Korean defectors ranging in age from 20 to 39, and found that the average height of North Korean males was 165.6 centimeters (5 feet 5 inches), and North Korean females 154.9 centimeters (5 feet 1 inches). By comparison, an average South Korean man was 172.5 centimeters (5 feet six inches) tall and a woman 159.1 centimeters (5 feet 2.5 inches). The cause was clear: North Korea suffered from food shortages and the collapse of its public health and medical care system. In an essay from 2009 Professor Daniel Schwekendiek from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul stated that North Korean adult men are, on average, between 3 to 8cm (1.2 to 3.1 inches) shorter than their South Korean counterparts. This is also the data on the BBC website (illustrated above) which says South Korean men are an average of 173.5 centimeters tall, and North Koreans are 3 to 8 centimeters shorter. But the most recent data I could find, at Wisevoter.com, puts the North Korean at 175 cm and a South Korean at 176cm. Just one centimeter apart! So, I really don’t know what the exact difference is!
So Hitchens was definitely exaggerating. But nevertheless, the height difference between North and South Korea is real and can only be put down to one thing: the political systems. In effect, the Korean peninsula is a tragic experiment in the impact on culture of biology.
This is what is called ‘epigenetic change’, which refers to environmental factors that impact on the human genome. The DNA sequence does not change but the organism's observable traits are modified. These epigenetic factors are typically described as external agents like heavy metals, pesticides, diesel exhaust, tobacco smoke, hormones, radioactivity, viruses and bacteria, or lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, stress, and sleep. One can also add political systems whose policies directly impact on what, how, when, and which people eat, what kind of medical care they receive, and what environmental agents people are or are not exposed to.
All these factors influence the expression of some genes, both positively and negatively. In the case of North Korea, mostly negatively. The variation of hieght is therefore graphic evidence on the most basic level of the regime’s abject failure. Maybe North Koreans are not ‘racist dwarfs’, but they certainly have paid a terrible physical price so that a vile clique can cling onto power.
To put the Korean statistics in perspective, here is some more data: an adult man in the UK is 178 cm average height, in the USA is 178 cm, and in France is 179cm (yes! taller on average that the Brits, which was shocking news to me, at least). The tallest human males in the world are Dutchmen at 184cm - an average 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) bigger than North Koreans.
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Over the past two hundred years almost everyone in the world has been getting taller thanks to a better diet and medical care. As in Europe before the modern period, during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) Koreans adults were significantly shorter on average than today’s Koreans - Northern and Southern. According to the first nationwide study into the height of Koreans, including Joseon era Koreans, average heights of both male have increased by 12.9 centimeters (5 inches) and female adults by 11.6 centimeters (4.5 inches) over the past century.
But just as on the Korean peninsular today, history also shows that the trajectory is not always continuously upwards. Here’s something interesting I found while surfing for this post at OSU.edu: Northern European men had actually lost an average of 6.3 centimeters (2.5 inches) of height by the 1700s , and this loss that was not fully recovered until the first half of the 20th century!
A variety of factors contributed to the drop – and subsequent regain – in average height during the last millennium. These factors include climate change; the growth of cities and the resulting spread of communicable diseases; changes in political structures; and changes in agricultural production.
"Average height is a good way to measure the availability and consumption of basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, medical care and exposure to disease," [Richard] Steckel said. "Height is also sensitive to the degree of inequality between populations."
"These brief periods of warming disguised the long-term trend of cooler temperatures, so people were less likely to move to warmer regions and were more likely to stick with traditional farming methods that ultimately failed," he said. "Climate change was likely to have imposed serious economic and health costs on northern Europeans, which in turn may have caused a downward trend in average height."
Urbanization and the growth of trade gained considerable momentum in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Both brought people together, which encouraged the spread of disease. And global exploration and trade led to the worldwide diffusion of many diseases into previously isolated areas.
"Height studies for the late 18th and early 19th centuries show that large cities were particularly hazardous for health," Steckel said. "Urban centers were reservoirs for the spread of communicable diseases."
Inequality in Europe grew considerably during the 16th century and stayed high until the 20th century – the rich grew richer from soaring land rents while the poor paid higher prices for food, housing and land.
"In poor countries, or among the poor in moderate-income nations, large numbers of people are biologically stressed or deprived, which can lead to stunted growth," Steckel said. "It's plausible that growing inequality could have increased stress in ways that reduced average heights in the centuries immediately following the Middle Ages."
Political changes and strife also brought people together as well as put demand on resources.
"Wars decreased population density, which could be credited with improving health, but at a large cost of disrupting production and spreading disease," Steckel said. "Also, urbanization and inequality put increasing pressure on resources, which may have helped lead to a smaller stature."
Exactly why average height began to increase during the 18th and 19th centuries isn't completely clear, but Steckel surmises that climate change as well as improvements in agriculture helped.
"Increased height may have been due partly to the retreat of the Little Ice Age, which would have contributed to higher yields in agriculture. Also, improvements in agricultural productivity that began in the 18th century made food more plentiful to more people.
And here to finish are some famous people’s heights:
Bonaparte = 168cm.
Hitler = 174 cm.
Kim Jong-eun = 168.9 cm.
Putin = 169cm.
Trump = 184cm.
Interestingly, Hitchens (who died in 2011) was 175 cm tall,. That is, the same height as an average North Korean male today.
NOTES
The image at the start of this post is from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41228181
Christopher Hitchens article is at: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/02/kim-jong-il-s-regime-is-even-weirder-and-more-despicable-than-you-thought.html
Daniel Schwekendiek essay is at: ttps://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/abs/height-and-weight-differences-between-north-and-south-korea/2EED5360F62997E3007425258C04A45A
The epigentics diagram is from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41440-019-0248-0
The data about Joseon era average heights is from: https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120131000667
The quotation about average heights in Europe over the past three hundred years is at: https://news.osu.edu/men-from-early-middle-ages-were-nearly-as-tall-as-modern-people/
My list of famous people’s heights is from: https://www.celebheights.com/s/Kim-Jong-Un-49758.html
Wisevoter.com data is at: https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/average-height-by-country/