"...After the Korean War, a three-year tussle between capitalism and communism ending in a stalemate, the South was left shattered with income per head on par with the poorest parts of Africa.
Life was such a struggle some people even defected to the North, which under its founder Kim il-Sung and with Soviet backing was more prosperous than its southern rival.
Yet, within my lifetime, this place has gone from poverty to prosperity at unprecedented speed, now even exceeding average wealth in the European Union.
...But the real sign of progress and true indicator of the dynamism of capitalism comes not in the mega-city itself but those well-educated people walking the streets.
I towered over those old ladies in the restaurant – I’m at least a foot taller than many of their generation.Yet when I strolled back to my hotel through an area thronged with younger people, many of those in their twenties and thirties didn’t fall too far short of my six-foot-one height (or 1.85 meters).
Indeed, I looked straight into the eyes of many of those I passed while walking through Jongo-gu and the Gwanghwamun financial district.
For South Korea has not only grown rapidly richer but rapidly taller.
A report last year, led by Imperial College, London, tracked global heights over the past century and found the average for women shot up by a remarkable 20.2 cm, faster than any other of the 200 nationalities studied.
Today the average female height in South Korea is 1.62 meters – only two centimeters smaller than British women and not that far behind Latvians, who at 1.7 meters are the world’s tallest females.
A century ago South Korean men were 150th tallest on the planet; today, they are 99 places higher in the global league table..."
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