Check out this from the Chosun:
The shape of the head also changed, the forehead morphing from flat and narrow to more convex and wider. Overall, heads have become rounder, chins narrower, the mid-facial area longer, and cheekbones less prominent
Foreheads more convex?
Chins Narrower?
Mid-facial area (nose zone) longer?
Cheekbones less prominent?
Oh my, Koreans are changing into white people! Maybe Rick Yune was on to something in Die Another Day.
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, gee. Of course people are changing. Nutrition has a lot to do with it. In the early 70′s, a great percentage of the population had survived malnutrition and war.
But, as for facial features, it may be related to the fact that a great number of babies are now delivered by c-section.
It’s all the meat and cheese modern Koreans are eating nowadays. Pretty soon, they will start feeling inexorable waves of guilt for all the suffering they have bestowed upon humanity in the colonial 18th and 19th centuries…
I’m pretty sure all of the changes are all related to plastic surgery. Nutrition and C-sections? Nice one Doogie Howser MD!
Anyways, I don’t buy the nutrition thing, because I am 100% ethnic Korean, and grew up eating more hamburgers than kimchi, and I still look Korean as f***. Round face, small eyes and everything.
There are no plastic surgery procedures that I know of which shortens the length of the face and head. ( Unless they saw off the top of the skull? LOL). Jaw bone reductions are common, but they are too expensive and too drastic for average people to endure. Also, it’s pretty difficult to change the body to limb proportions with plastic surgery – unless you do the most drastic procedure where they crack the knee bones and stretch it. All of which, I don’t think is enough to explain the averages.
My guess is it’s the changing dietary habit and factors associated with Korea’s changing weather. Korea is not a freezing cold country anymore. The global warming has almost eliminated winter in Korea.
LOL…global warming…WOW…not freezing in Korea? Where do you get your crack?
Anyone think for a second that these measurements are just the latest in the Korean propensity to want certain results when setting about a “study?” For what end? I won’t begin to try to understand the Korean motivation.
If there is a difference, it’s obviously the combination of the previous generation being one of the poorest people on earth, highly malnourished, and the next generation getting proper nutrition. It’s not milk either, as Korean chicks brought up in Western countries tend to have boobs, but Korean Korean girls have no boobs, unless plastic.
And what the hell is this fascination here with phrenology-esque studies here?
“LOL…global warming…WOW…not freezing in Korea? ”
It’s not freezing in Korea as before. Korea now has relatively mild winters, compared to decades before. It’s just my wild guess. Another guess I can throw out, it could be better prenatal care. Babies in wombs aren’t getting starved and mothers have better nutritions before the birth. That’s another guess.
said transformation reminded of a certain Grateful Dead concert back in the eighties.
Likely more wishful thinking than fact. Chinese, Japanese and Koreans have all fancied themselves the Europeans of Asia at various times. Unscientific of pseudoscientific claims like these are fairly common in Korea, and what’s great about them is that there is seldom any need to substantiate them since they are so seldom questioned.
It could also be that the gene pool has been contaminated by people whose body/facial features we are seening now. Anyone consider that the Korean War might have resulted in a shit load of “Dodo-bird” babies? You know, when one bird leaves its eggs in another bird’s nest?
Nutrition would not explain the change in bone and facial structure, mixing of races would.
The characteristics described by the article are phenotypes shared by every race, at lower frequencies of course for Asians. But remember blacks and Indians have the features described in the article.
I admit that I too am guilty of thinking “caucasoid!” when looking at certain features on certain Asian individuals but I’ve decided it’s a fallacy. I haven’t yet substantiated to myself why, though.
Dodo birds are fat birds in the southern hemisphere which could not fly. They were eliminated by being easy pickings for Europeans in the ANZAC world.
i think you are looking for cuckoo birds. Where the baby is way larger than the mother.
Mizar5, I challenged you to a meeting. I challenge you again. I will expose you. I don’t think you even live in Brooklyn. However, do meeet me in Manhatten on May 30, 2009, by Woori bank’s building on Korea Way.
Koreans, I noticed have a huge self conscious issue about ‘big’ faces. I did not understand the issue, until I met a Korean female who actually had a humongous face. She looked like an ogre. Do mankind a favor and please do not breed. If your last name is Kim, and you have a relative that looks like Kim Jongil, it is ethical to get sterilized, asap.
modern diets, lifestyle, behavior and climate change is effecting the physical attributes of modern Koreans. It’s expected result.
T-song,
If you’re so smart, tell us why younger Koreans taller on average than those of the older generations?
Nutrition can explain changes in bone and facial structure. Check out dentist Weston Price’s definitive work Nutrition and Degeneration. He used photographs and physical exams to document differences in facial structure and dental health among various peoples on earth, observing that people who ate traditional diets with meat, produce, and minimally processed grains had straight teeth free of cavities despite never having seen a dentist. They had wider faces and jaws to accomodate a full set of healthy teeth.
I know I’m simplifying things, but:
phenotype= genotype + environmental factors (the availability of food, medical care, illnesses, etc)
T-song, if genetically you are short and stocky, don’t expect a few hamburgers to make you look like Choi Hong Man. However, had you been deprived of proper nutrition and medical care as a child, you’d probably be much shorter than you are now.
“Nutrition can explain changes in bone and facial structure….”
Agreed. You only need to look at Korean adoptees and you notice many look almost bi-racial even though biologically they are basically pure Korean. Nutrition and Western food culture and perhaps being surrounded by mainly Caucasians from a very young age (I would posit that is some kind of physiological and phycological mirror effect) certainly changed their Asian facial structure.
LOL…now a second moron thinks global warming is making Korea faces smaller, cheeks less prominent, and somehow making the Korean forehead convex. Damn powerful sun, eh?
WHAT. THE. FUCK. ARE. YOU. SMOKING?
Global warming? Oh well, I guess that would be consistent with Russians traditionally being so tiny.
it’s official. Mizar5 is dickless.
so I guess that means you have no interest in meeting him anymore?
Koreans are so obsessed with facial and body proportions, I swear. They even buy special pillows for babies for fear of flattening the back of the baby’s head.
Sonagi: So basically thinner faces/jaws is a result of an unhealthy diet?
silver surfer: While the pampering of kids can get out of hand at times, those pillows are pretty reasonable; nurses here tells mothers quite often to move a sleep babies head so as not to permute the soft skull.
Not with a dick like you stalking me. I currently reside in PA and only occassionally visit with my daughter in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn and son in NJ. I seldom get over to Brooklyn these days, no less Herald Square, though I once worked there at 1 Penn Plaza.
Your obsession with me is flattering, and while I may use you as a sock puppet online, I have a life in the real world. If you’d like to believe that I never lived in Brooklyn and have no children, then don’t let me shatter your fragile hold on reality. Whatever you’d like to believe about me is fine.
Actually, babies are laid down so as to ensure the back of the head gets flattened. While that is generally thought attractive on males, on the other hand, several ladies have told me that they curl their hair becuase they don’t like the way their hair “dies” when it cascades over the flatness of the back of their scalps, so it’s all a matter of context, I suppose.
I think most people share body image problems, not just Koreans, but it is curious that Koreans tend to be acutely self-conscious about the particular facial features by which they suffer in comparison to Caucasians – small eyes, flat faces, low nose bridges, dark skin, height. I believe it is likely a reflection of a class status identification issue, as Caucasians represent to Koreans the dominent economic and cultural elite class. It’s not that Koreans want to divest themselves of Koreanness, but that they want to be identified as elite.
come on now, you can’t change your story now that your DAUGHTER lives in Brooklyn.
You’ve been maintaining steadfast that YOU are a New Yorker living in Brooklyn. Face it. You have no daughter, no son, no work experience in Manhatten.
you disappoint me, Mizar5. I thought you would LIE better than that. Now that I am balls up to meeting you face to face, you are changing your residency to Pennsylvania.
Ok, I have time to go watch a Phillies game. I’ll see you in Phillie. Name the place, time.
Now, don’t go off changing your residency to Washington, DC, you dipshit.
what happened to I am a New Yorker, blah, blah, blah?
“only occassionally”
“seldom get over to Brooklyn”
admit it, asshole, you lying poser.
Unlike you, wjk, I have a job. I relocated from NY to Korea a few years back to work for Samsung. They relocated me back to NYC (although their NY office is actually located in NJ) but when I got a better offer I moved on to Harrisburgh and then Pittsburgh. I still own a hous in NY which I rent out.
By the way, do you suffer from OCD or are you bipolar? Just curious.
Not diet alone, obviously, but yes, according to the late Weston Price, diet does impact facial structure, and those changes may be epigenetic. If your parents suffered from malnutrition as children, they may pass on some of the consequences to you even if mom was well-fed during her pregnancy. The before and after photos of indigenous peoples fed a traditional diet and a modern diet of nutritionally sparse refined foods made with white flour and sugar will make you a primal convert.
i have a job, too. Fortunately for me, my job starts July 1st, 2009. Thus, I have limited, but free time to verify your identity. This is a golden opportunity to nail you. I’m recording our encounter for certain, if it happens.
Come on dude, you never worked a day for Samsung. Pittsburgh is nowhere near New York City. Your lie keeps growing.
1/ first it was ‘I am a New Yorker’.
2/ less than 1 month later, now you live in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.
3/ then you say only your daughter is in Brooklyn.
keep changing stories. You participated in interoggation unknowingly, and now you have a string of lies to back up.
not that it matters.
Just curious. You said in your own lying fingers, that Your son is making a new race with his black girlfriend. Are you going to claim your daughter is making a new race with her white boyfriend?
well, the people with good jobs get Memorial Day off. Come see your fake daughter. I can still see you. I mean, normal grandparents are dying to see their grandchildren. Who hires a really old and dumb dude like you, anyway?
Self-contradictory, my volatile little sock puppet. On one hand you assert that you’re tricking me into changing my story to expose me as a non credible source of information; on the other hand, you state that you’ve been blowing smoke up my ass to dig up even more information.
Once again, I’ve been consistent and you’ve been flailing.
I’m afraid you’ve been played like a violin yet again.
Ok, my suspicions are confirmed: Mizar doesn’t know what a sockpuppet is. I’ve noticed you subtly misusing the term but here’s the proof. For your edification:
A “sockpuppet” is when an established person on a site/blog creates a new login ID and post under that name, claiming to be a different person and usually agreeing with their ‘real’ persona.
For example, if you Mizar, created a login named, I don’t know, “FakeKorean,” and then posted under FakeKorean, pretending to be a distinct person from Mizar but constantly agreeing with and praising Mizar.
This is what Kushibo did when he created Nora. Nora was Kushibo’s sockpuppet.
Since I don’t think that wjk and Mizar are the same person, posting under different IDs, then wjk is not your sockpuppet.
About the special head-shape-molding baby pillows; it is not just Koreans that use them. They are pretty common in all the developed world. Doctors recommend that babies spend all of their unsupervised time on their backs to help prevent SIDS. With their soft skulls, kids might have their skull shape distorted just from the weight of their little heads flatenning the back part. (BTW, this also means that babies these days tend to start crawling later than babies of earlier generations since they have much less ‘belly time.’)
#27 That sounds a little too much like the old “if you cut off a rat’s tail, its babies will be tailess” theory put forward by that dead guy before Darwin whom I don’t feel like looking up right now. On the other hand I like that, if true, it would be a blow against the ‘genetics is destiny’ idea.
Lamarck?
colontos,
Why does a sock puppet have to be one that’s always praising its owner? If one wanted to underhandedly attack a site by creating unncessary tension, surely one great way to go about it would be to create an antagonist sock puppet. Or was there another name reserved for antagonist socks?
Of course i do think wjk is a separate person, but if it was ever revealed that he was a creation spawned from the hypothetically disturbed mind of Mizar5….well. It surely would be an awe inspiring level of deviousness.
There’s been some research lately that suggests that Lamarck’s theory, which was taught to me as being erroneous in high school biology, might have some validity after all. Something about how lifestyle can activate/deactivate certain genes, and how the state of activation can be passed on to offspring. I saw a documentary on it on a trans-pacific flight a few years ago, but forgot the name of the concept/theory so haven’t really looked into it anymore. Sounds similar to what Sonagi might have been talking about in 27. Anyone know what it’s called? Sonagi?
At any rate, I don’t suspect that getting nose, eye, chin/face, or boobjobs are effective in activating/deactivating nose-size, eye-size, chin/face-size, or boob-size genes. I’d be happy to lead the study on boob-size though.
Well, yeah, sockpuppets can be antagonistic, too. The main point is that it’s one person acting like two or more different people.
Well, well, well, aren’t you the Internet tough guy, wjk.
Mizar5 may be a pussy, but I’m not. I _will_ meet you at W. 32nd St. (not even Koreans call it “Korea Way”), but I will not waste a Saturday waiting for you to show up.
We have a lot to discuss, and I’m looking forward to meeting you. You’d better wear a Mets cap or something so I can tell you apart from the other Koreans milling about.
And Mizar5, I’m now convinced you’re not Korean.
Both Korean men and women find the flat backs of heads unattractive.
You are completely wrong about the purpose of the pillows — they are to allow a rounded head to develop, by having an indentation in the middle of the pillow. They are most definitely not to create a flat head.
Hey, if you guys really do meet up, can I watch? I’m dead serious.
@cmm:
Today I read a news story on the subject of Lamarck’s theory being vindicated by recent research supporting the idea that acquired gene expression can be inherited. The story used the term epigenetics. I don’t know what Lamarck called it.
There are already many holes in the ‘genetics is destiny’ idea. Epigenetics actually favors ‘genetics is destiny’ as the acquired trait is inherited.
JW, please take a camera. Preferably a video camera.
Robert, is a live stream feasible? I promise to click on your google ad links for the first time ever.
Dogbertt, do you realize the eternal hero status you’d receive here if you popped that little twit a good one in the piehole?
Sonagi, thanks. It’s been something that my mind has been curious about from time to time.
I was hoping to warm things up with a 닭다리 싸움 so I can have some fun too..then they can move on to more serious stuff like grabbing each other by the balls and rolling on the ground. Of course I’ll be there as witness so that neither one can post up any biased interpretations of who kicked who’s ass…
One for dogburtt. I stand corrected. It’s been some 30 years since my wife did that and I never paid it much attention. I take it youre closer to child rearing age than I. We never had such a pillow, but she used to use blankets to that effect.
Oh and good luck wrestling my little sock puppet. He won’t show up. He’s all bluster, no guts, no brain. I ought to know; I created him that way.
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