The Segye Ilbo reports that more and more women are having trouble finding shoes that fit. The average foot size of Korean women between the ages of 18 and 24 has increased from 229mm in 1980 to 234 as of 2004. Hardly sasquatch-like, but shoe makers have yet to make the adjustment. One netizen complaining of the difficulty in a post at a Korean portal site got over 1,000 comments of support. Some women even ask their friends in the United States to buy them shoes, as this is cheaper than getting them specially made.
I have little sympathy—they should try finding gomusin in size 280. Let alone teolsin… because nothing says “sexy” better than teolsin.
Meanwhile, I’d be slacking in my duties if I didn’t point out that women’s feet aren’t the only thing getting bigger in Korea.
4 Comments
First and last link are the same.
OhMy, you’re right. Corrected.
From what my mom told me about big feet, I fear that our troops here will soone no longer be persecuted for petty crimes such as roof-riding on taxi’s and the occasional self-defensive stabbing of aggressive North Korean subterfuge agents on the subway, but will now be held responsible for the extended shoe sizes of Korean women.
While some health profesionals attribute Western diets, and particularly Western chains such as Macdonalds and TGIF and their kin, for the increasing changes to Korean phyisiological changes that result in increased breast sizes and butts in local women that are rounded to a firm, pert, circumference, unfortunately I can’t draw a Pi diagram to fully make my point.
I read a while back that the furniture is also causing a lot of problems to some younger Koreans because manufacturers haven’t adapted the dimensions of their products to the increasingly tall population.
In any case, young Koreans eat more and better than the previous generations. It’s got nothing to do with TGIF and McDonald’s since people don’t eat there 24/7. It’s got more to do with the fact that the traditional Korean diet is deficient in protein and older Koreans grew up malnourished because of the Korean war. Young Koreans are simply eating a lot more meat and dairy products than than their parents and grandparents did while growing up.