Toward an Anthropometric History of Choson Dynasty Korea, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century

This paper investigates the anthropometric history of pre-modern Korea drawing from military rosters of the Choson Dynasty (1392-1910). We use height collected from up to 4,256 male recruits measured from the sixteenth to early eighteenth century. As previous research did not address the conversion of recorded height measured in local Korean units (ch'ok) into common centimeters in a convincing fashion, this paper pays special attention to this problem by providing evidence that one specific local measure, called chuch'ok, was used throughout the entire period. Using our new conversion method and focusing on 2,596 men who reached their terminal height, we show that during the observed period, mean final height of pre-modern Koreans was about 166 cm, which indicates that they enjoyed the same biological living standards as Europeans at that time.