I didn't think much of it at the time. I figured it was a clinic that administers growth hormones to severely vertically challenged youngsters, like FIFA's World Player of the Year.
That may not be the case:
South Korea Stretches Standards for Success (Thanks to Connie for the link.)
"Swayed by the increasingly popular conviction that height is crucial to success, South Korean parents are trying all manner of remedies to increase their children’s stature, spawning hundreds of growth clinics that offer hormone shots, traditional Eastern treatments and special exercises . . .
Kim Se-hyun, a fifth grader, walked on a treadmill with her torso encased in a harness suspended from an overhead steel bar. The contraption, the clinic maintains, will stretch her spine and let her exercise with less pressure on her legs.
Nearby, sweat rolled off Lee Dong-hyun, 13, as he pedaled a recumbent bicycle while reading a comic book. Behind him, his sister, Chae-won, the shortest girl in her first-grade class, stretched to touch her toes on a blue yoga mat, squealing as an instructor pushed down against her back."
Well, I just want to say that I'm appalled by this. To think, they jab needles into these kids, suspend them from the ceiling while they run on treadmills, stretch them on modern-day medieval torture racks, shove on their spines . . . and my parents did NONE of this for me! Thanks, Mom and Dad. Maybe if you weren't so stingy I'd be a success, instead of being forever limited by my 5'10" frame (that's 178 cm for people in lame countries).
2 comments:
Interesting that the average male height in South Korea is 5′ 7.3″, while the average in the North is 5′ 4.5″.
http://www.interbasket.net/news/2009/09/17/average-height-by-country-males-20-years/
You should assist the Koreans' endless faith in the perfectibility of man. Since the Dutch are tallest on average, you might start a restaurant serving Dutch cuisine at exorbitant prices. Lots of parsnips, rookworst and bacon, but never shrimp.
That's actually a scam that might well work here. Let's get Dean in on this.
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