SEOUL: A recent online post in South Korea has sparked controversy after a user, claiming he faced romantic rejections due to his height, threatened to murder his father.
In an anonymous post on Everytime, an online platform for college students, the person who described himself as standing 167cm tall, expressed frustration with his parents over his lack of romantic success.
He posted that he has never had a girlfriend and shared that his mother advised him to ask friends to set him up on dates, while his father told him to avoid women who judge him for his height.
He also wrote that his father is 165cm tall and his mother 156cm.
When people responded negatively to the post, he hit back, "How would you feel if someone committed an unspeakable crime to you and subjected you to PTSD, then blatantly told you to get over it?"
Another user pointed out that the writer's father was able to get married despite being shorter, to which the original poster said that "rapists could get married then."
The extreme beliefs by this particular person are not shared by a vast majority of Koreans, but surveys suggest that men and women who are at least slightly taller than average are generally preferred in the dating pool.
Local matchmaking company Duo conducted a survey of 1,000 unmarried men and women across the country, which showed the average response from women for the height of an ideal husband to be 178.7cm tall.
The average male height in 2022 was 174.43cm for those in their 20s and 174.71cm for those in their 30s, according to the National Health Insurance Service.
The survey also showed that the average preferred height for a wife was 164.2cm. The average female height in 2022 was 162.5cm for those in their 20s and 162cm for those in their 30s, the aforementioned NHIS data showed.
Research from another matchmaking service, Couple.net, suggested that the difference in height between couples was more important for women than men.
Its 2024 survey of 1,062 men and 1,020 women asked the ideal height difference between couples. Men preferred a gap of 6 to 12cm, while women answered 10 to 18cm. - The Korea Herald/ANN
