ON THE OTHER HAND...:

North Koreans Shorter Than South Koreans (John Lyons, 6/15/10, WSJ)

North Korea’s national team players are about two inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts, notes Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, providing an interesting statement about the nutritional downsides of Stalinist dictatorships. [...]

A comparison by Folha sportswriters showed that the average height of the South Korean team is 1.825 meters, or around 6-foot 1-inch, compared to 1.78 meters, or around 5-foot 11-inches, for North Korea. South Korea has 17 players over 6-feet-tall, compared to eight for North Korea.

What’s more, North Korea’s height average is lifted by the presence of players such as the 6-foot-tall striker Jong Tae-se, one of the taller players on the team. Mr. Jong was born to South Korean parents in Japan, where he spent his youth.

South and North Korea –- technically still at war — are participating in the same World Cup for the first time since the 1950s, when their economic models sharply diverged. Unable to feed itself properly, Communist North Korea rations food. South Korea, with a gross domestic product dozens of times bigger than in the North, doesn’t.

“The Brazilian national team’s first adversary in the World Cup is an example of what nutrition can do to the bio-type of people,” the Brazilian paper noted.

...only the Germans play with more discipline.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 16, 2010 5:46 AM