Wild😬
Korea was one people until 1945. Today the men of the South stand up to three inches taller than the men of the North.
Same ancestry, same language, the same height at the start. The border is 160 miles long and 2.5 miles wide.
In the North, food comes through the state ration. Rice when there is rice, maize when there is not, and meat on a few holidays a year. In 2012 the army cut its minimum height for a recruit to 4ft 8in, because too few 17 year olds could reach the old one.
In the South, meat consumption rose about tenfold in 50 years. Beef, pork, eggs and milk went from luxuries to every day.
South Korean women gained 8 inches in height over the 20th century. It is the largest increase recorded for any population on earth.
Children who escape from the North are visibly smaller than Southern children of the same age. Fed in the South, the young ones catch up. The older ones are too late.
Nobody designed the experiment. But it has 75 million subjects, a genetic control and a hard border, and it has run for 80 years.
One side of the wire was fed grain by a government, and the other side ate meat.