A team of local scientists has found that the size of South Koreans’ heads grew rapidly after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. 

The team at the Korea University College of Medicine found that the cranial cavity of a South Korean born in the 1970s was around 90 milliliters bigger than that of a Korean born in the 1930s. 

The team also found that the shape of both Korean men and women’s skulls changed. 

Changes in human skull morphology were also observed in Western society as it underwent industrialization and urbanization over a hundred to two hundred years.

The study results, which were published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, show that South Korea witnessed such changes in a span of 40 years following its liberation. 

Professor Rhyu Im-joo of the Korea University College of Medicine’s Forensic Medicine Department said South Koreans saw changes in their physique after being supplied with appropriate nutrition when its society gained stability and the nation’s economy began to boom from the 1970s.