Grown' Up

This kind of story always blows me away, partially because I've watched it happen before my very eyes. Koreans are taller than when I got here. I had a girlfriend once tell me that if we had kids she'd "know how to make our kids tall." I had no idea. I'd always thought hanging for hours on the swingset in the backyard was the way to go about that.

From the New York Times:

A growing conviction that tallness is crucial to success has prompted South Korean parents to try all manner of approaches to increase their children’s height, spawning hundreds of “growth clinics” that offer growth hormone shots, Eastern herbal medicine and special exercises to ensure that young clients will be the ones looking down, not the ones looked down upon.

“In our society, it’s all about looks,” said Ms. Seo, 35. “I’m afraid my daughter is shorter than her peers. I don’t want her to be ridiculed and lose self-confidence because of her height.”

I don't mean to oversell this. I don't think I saw many Koreans taller than 6'3 when I arrived here, and plenty of guys around 5'0. Now the site of a 6'3+ fella is commonplace, and while the little guys are still running around, bein' cute and everything, the number of tall young people in this country -- both men and women, as the story says -- is startling.