[WHY] Oh, the lengths Koreans will go, to make themselves taller!

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Published: 15 Apr. 2023, 07:00 Updated: 15 Apr. 2023, 07:52

[WHY] Oh, the lengths Koreans will go, to make themselves taller!

A pediatrician at Konyang University hospital in Daejeon measures the height of a 9-year-old girl surnamed Jeong. [JOONGANG ILBO]

What would you do to stand just a few extra centimeters taller? For some earnest Koreans, the answer could be spending a fortune on vitamins, sipping herbal medicines containing deer antlers and ginseng, getting daily growth hormone injections, acupuncture and even surgery.

The Korean population has grown taller at an alarming rate over the past century, compared to the rest of the world. According to research by the Imperial College in London, Korean women grew a whopping 20.2 centimeters (8 inches) and men 15.2 centimeters from 1914 to 2014, while the global average growth during the same period was 7.62 centimeters.

The average height of Koreans today is 159.6 centimeters for females and 172.5 centimeters for males, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

The country’s remarkable growth spurt is certainly related to significant upswings in people's nutrition and health, but what also may be playing a part, especially more recently, is some peoples' incessant efforts to become taller.

Korea’s market for growth hormones has nearly doubled in four years, from 126.2 billion won ($96.1 million) in 2018 to 237.2 billion won in 2022, according to drug market research institute IQVIA. The sales of height-related dietary supplements grew tenfold in the same period, as reported by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in January.

The tendency to fawn over tallness isn’t exclusive to Korea; however, the obsession appears especially pronounced because of those actively pursuing height.

Molding growth from youth

According to Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 43,618 children visited a hospital for their short stature in 2021, which is a 22.6 percent increase from the year prior. [JOONGANG ILBO]

“My second child isn’t short, but she isn’t tall either, so I wanted to visit a growth clinic and, if possible, start her on a growth hormone treatment,” said a mother of two surnamed Noh as she was leaving a growth clinic in central Seoul. “As a parent, I feel it is my duty to do my best to set my child up for success.”

“There’s only a narrow window of time in which kids can still grow, and I want to do what I can for him while I still can,” said Lee Hyun-su, also at the same clinic with her 9-year-old son who, according to her, was about 2 centimeters below average in his age group.

Vitamins for growth made by local pharmaceutical company Chong Kun Dang [CHONG KUN DANG]

Growth hormone injections, like the one pictured above, are prescribed to children with small stature at hospitals and growth clinics. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

According to Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, 43,618 children visited a hospital for their short stature in 2021, which is a 22.6 percent increase from the year prior. Since 2016, the number has shot up twofold. The number of children is expected to get much larger, with patients visiting separate private growth clinics, but there are no numbers for these because the establishments are not required to register with the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service.

Growth clinics monitor a child’s growth trajectory and check for height abnormalities or growth disorders. The most common treatment for children with short stature is growth hormone injections. At clinics that base their practice on Asian medicine, doctors recommend acupuncture and herbal medicines.

Growth hormone injections, which are particularly popular among parents with pre-teens, cost about 10 million won per year, and treatments are usually conducted for around five to six years. Health insurance only covers children whose height falls within the shortest 3 percentile of their age group and those who have been diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency or a growth disorder.

A 10th-grader surnamed Hong said that he received injections from age 10 to 15, “every night, on my leg, arm and stomach.”

Born slightly under the average birth weight, Hong is now 171 centimeters tall — just 1 centimeter short of the national average.

An image of a mother and her son leaving a building in central Seoul [YONHAP]

Another mother of two surnamed Kim lives in Australia but comes to Korea twice every year to receive a bulk prescription of growth hormone injections for her kids, now ages 9 and 8.

“My kids have idiopathic short stature, but I found it very difficult to find a doctor in Australia who would prescribe the injections,” she said. Idiopathic short stature is the fancy term for shortness without an underlying cause. It is medically benign and not categorized as a growth disorder.

She realizes there is a risk when prescribing so many doses without having a doctor do check-ups on the kids, especially because the injections can lead to various side effects, such as high blood pressure and joint pain. But she testifies to the treatment’s wonders on her first child, who has grown about 10 centimeters each year since she first began getting the injections in 2019.

“It’s hard to give up now, especially after seeing my second child, a boy, get pushed around and teased for his short stature at school.”

Social stigma on short stature

A scene from KBS's "Global Talk Show" in 2009 when a female panel called all men under 180 centimeters, in her standards, a "loser" [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The social bias on height, otherwise called heightism, was first publicly acknowledged in Korea in 2009 when a female guest panel on the KBS talk show “Global Talk Show” (2006-10) blatantly called all men below 180 centimeters, by her standards, a “loser.” The scene triggered many men, and over 200 people filed for 4 billion won in damages to broadcaster KBS through the Press Arbitration Commission.

In a 2016 poll by Opensurvery, over 50 percent percent of its 500 participants ages 9 to 16 and their parents answered that height is an important part of one’s life. As to why it was important, 38 percent answered for a confidence boost; 27.4 percent for being socially accepted; 20.9 percent for dating the opposite sex; and 13.3 percent for a satisfactory social life.

Over the past two decades, tall stature has further solidified as an ideal trait. K-pop idols doubling as beauty icons are getting taller every year, with many recording well above the national average.

This reporter calculated the mean height of five female groups that debuted last year, which totaled 166.4 centimeters, and five male groups, totaling 177 centimeters — both 3 centimeters taller than the height average of five female and five male acts that debuted in 2007.

Girl group H1-KEY during a press event at Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on July 2022. The average height of H1-KEY is 171 centimeters. (5 feet, 7 inches). [YONHAP]

The negative stigma against short stature applies more strongly to men than to women. Men who are shorter than 172 centimeters, according to various local internet communities, are called kijaknam, an often derogative colloquial term for shorter men.

Many of their foremost concerns are about dating. “I’ve been turned down so many times for blind dates because of my height,” reads a March post under the kijaknam community inside the local online platform dcinside.

The negative stigma against short stature applies more strongly to men than to women. [GETTY IMAGES]

“I’m especially conscious of my height on dates and never leave the house without sole lifts because I know most girls prefer guys who are much taller than them,” reads another post from February.

“Height is a definite factor that many of our clients take into consideration when selecting their future spouse. Female clients tend to take height into consideration more than males,” said an employee from the marriage consulting company Gayeon, “but both male and female clients have very specific height limits. For instance, males want a match that is at least 160 centimeters tall, and females want someone who is at least 170 centimeters.”

Last resort: leg-lengthening surgery

[PIXABAY]

Societal pressures to be tall may lead some to take drastic measures and surgically lengthen their limbs — a high-risk procedure that involves the breaking of two femurs and, afterward, an excruciating recovery.

“Worst case scenario, the patient may not walk again,” said Lee Dong-hoon, surgeon and director of the orthopedic clinic Donghoon Advanced Lengthening Reconstruction Institute in Seongnam, Gyeonggi.

Performing about 300 limb lengthening surgeries annually, Lee said that the ratio of patients that he sees who are males in their 20s is about nine to one.

“Most are in the 160-centimeter range, though I’ve met with patients as tall as 180 centimeters. He said that he wanted to be a model, and, to be one, he needed an extra 6 or 7 centimeters.”

Limb lengthening surgery, depending on the patient and the specific surgery, can cost from 40 million won to 80 million won. It takes about seven months to fully recover.

He also sees many patients from abroad, including Asia, Europe and North America.

“I’d say about one in five patients every week are foreigners,” Lee said. “There aren’t many qualified doctors in this field, and oftentimes people come to the clinic after experiencing severe side effects of a limb-lengthening surgery done at a different clinic.”

Lee’s clinic is the country’s only orthopedic clinic that has been certified by the Ministry of Welfare as a place that has been deemed to provide "safe and excellent medical care to overseas patients."

Before and after x-rays of height surgery. The patient has added 6.7 centimeters to height by lengthening the thighs. [DONGHOOD ADVANCED LENGTHENING AND RECONSTRUCTION INSTITUTE]

Italian surgeon Alessandro Codivilla (1861–1912) first wrote about limb lengthening in his 1905 publication presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Orthopaedic Association in the year prior. The field of limb lengthening further progressed in the 1980s when the Ilizarov method, which is the use of a metal ring-like brace to reconstruct, reshape or lengthen bones, was invented by Russian surgeon Gavriil Ilizarov (1921-1992).

The field still lacks a proper system of training and experienced professionals, and the surgery is high-risk with dozens of possible complications, said Lee. But, done successfully, it can give patients around 6, usually, and up to 18 extra centimeters.

“I call it a life-changing surgery because it can go very badly, but, when the surgery is successful, it can really turn a person’s life around,” he said.

Why go through it all?

Physical beauty in Korea today is perceived as something very attainable with the right amount of time, money and effort, according to Lim In-sook, a sociology professor at Korea University, and much of it has to do with how the plastic surgery industry operates. "They plaster before-and-after pictures of plastic surgery on billboards and run advertisements that make people more aware of their bodily flaws, all mounting to the point that if they undergo surgery, they, too, can be beautiful.”

Orthopedic surgeon Lee, however, said that plastic surgery can sometimes be a real cure for people whose primary source of stress is a certain body part or facial feature.

“Some orthopedic departments at large hospitals don’t perform the limb-lengthening procedure because they see these people stressed about their height as having a psychological problem called body dysmorphic disorder,” he said. “But in my experience, no matter how much counseling and comforting ‘things will get better’ phrases they hear, depression doesn’t go away. For those whose stress is directly related to their shortness, surgery can be a clear cure.”

Nevertheless, he maintained that limb-lengthening is a highly dangerous surgery with significant side effects when it goes wrong and a grueling recovery period even when done right, so it must be "carefully considered.”

“Requirements for what constitutes society’s version of ‘perfect beauty’ are endless,” said Lim. “Instead of putting so much of our time and resources toward something that will never be fulfilled, it’s important to remember that physical appearances are only a small part of what makes a person truly feel beautiful.”

BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]

korea joongAng daily

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[WHY] Oh, the lengths Koreans will go, to make themselves taller!

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