EFL
AMONG the many things for which North Korea is remarkable, it must have the densest concentration of slogans in the world. âDestroy the aggressors with merciless annihilating blows,â counsels one, emblazoned above a Pyongyang highway. âEach Korean must perform selfless feats to glorify the heroic deeds of leader Kim Jong Il,â advises a second. In recent years visitors â and defectors to Seoul, the South Korean capital â have described the strangest of all. It is seen in schools, gymnasiums and other places where children gather. Compared with the usual tone of socialist ferocity, it is direct and almost pleading: âTry to grow taller.â It is the closest thing to an official acknowledgement of one of the hidden catastrophes of North Korea: after a decade of food shortages, and four years of outright famine, a generation of its children have stunted growth.
Those few foreigners allowed to visit or live in the country report the same experience: encountering a group of children several years older than they appear. Teenagers look like pre-pubescent children. Young soldiers doing their military service look like 14-year-olds. Professor Pak Sun Young, a South Korean anthropologist, has conducted studies on North Korean defectors in Seoul, and on refugee children living clandestinely in the bordering regions of China. They had escaped the worst privations of a homeland where between a few hundred thousand and a few million people died of hunger in the late 1990s. She found that 70 per cent of the survivors of that catastrophe were stunted, and 25 per cent underweight. The average 14-year-old boy was 10in (25.4 cm) shorter than his average South Korean peer and 42lb (19kg) lighter. The average 17-year-old was 5ft tall, compared with 5ft 8in in the South. Even with improved access to food and medical care, many will never catch up.
The situation has consequences for North Koreaâs national defence, its economy and for any future reunification with South Korea. Young North Korean defectors in South Korea are taunted and discriminated against already because of their short stature. âItâs not that being short is bad in itself. The problem is the idea of body image in South Korean society,â Professor Pak said. âTall people are respected, and North Koreans feel very uncomfortable about being shorter.â |