Soldiers Often Help On Local Farms(3/50)

Malnutrition also gets in the way of development and makes young people look even younger.

I'm aware of all that.....but to me ( an almost 45 year old woman and mother) I see a child...regardless.

In fact, becoming a soldier is the best way to ensure you have a steady, if poor, source of sustenance.

Wanda, I don't think Tiffany said that he's not a child. Fifteen and sixteen year olds are still children.

[3: Contd from previous] There's the issue of what constitutes a child vs an adult. Whilst 18 might be the legal age at which adults privileges are magically bestowed (although in some countries and for some privileges is extends to 21 or even up to 25), there's nothing developmentally special about the day that someone turns 18. A young person is a young person and transitions to adulthood gradually. Many in their 20s are effectively still children, and some 15/16 year olds are mature to the level of an adult. This soldier deserves to be understood and respected on his terms without people making assumptions on his behalf, whether positive or negative. Finally, whilst living under the appalling NK distatorship is difficult, and thousands people living there may be "risking their lives" to leave, the USA's own reputation for personal risk through violence and poverty is a conspicuous elephant in the room...

I know that many of the comments here were posted in good faith, but some care and wider perspective needs to be taken... Firstly, many people are looking at the soldier with white/Western eyes. Many Asian people have the good (?) fortune to have visages that appear 'young' to Westerners, and can to white people look years (and even decades) younger than they are. This youth is older than 15-16: his facial and phalangeal morphometrics, as well as his secondary hair growth, are more consistent with those of someone of his background who is in their late teens or older. The malnutrition to which most North Koreans are prone would only reinforce the delay in onset of adult features. [Contd]

[2: Contd from previous] His nævus progression also suggests that he's received the sort of outdoor exposure that characterises a worker who's laboured for at least a good few years, and even though the KN dictatorship is brutal it's difficult to imagine that they put prepubescent children into the fields to work adult hours... None of this changes the fact that he IS young, but context is key. Another thing that probably needs context is the weight of the North Koreans depicted in these photos. Whilst they're almost certainly malnourished in terms of getting an adequate range of dietary elements and even simple calories, their weight is probably closer to the optimal weight for a healthy human than is the weight of most Westerners reading these pages. Agrarian Okinawans look very similar to these NK people, and Okinawans have long had the privilege of being the longest-lived people in the world. Again, it's a Western eyes thing... [Contd further...]

That's BS; they have to be 18 and that's legal voting age in the US. Drinking alcohol is not a human right; in Canada you have to be 19 but the voting and military service age is still 18. 19-year-olds are adults, not children. It's true they can sign up to the military at 17 if they have their parents' permission but are never put in combat positions until over 18. And they volunteer to join the military, are not forced. I'm not saying the US is perfect and have big issues with many aspects of its military, but I can't stand this knee-jerk moral equivalence crap every time something about North Korea is mentioned. People aren't constantly risking their lives to LEAVE the U.S. they way they are in NK.

Ignore my last comment, I misread what Kathy Prendergast wrote, I'm in agreement with her.

"People aren't constantly risking their lives to LEAVE the U.S. they way they are in NK." No they aren't, name some that aren't criminals re terrorists. Don't even try and compare the United States of America to North Korea.

17 or 18 year olds are not children, the are young Men and Ladies. I signed up for the Army when I was 17, Men sign up ot children.

exactly.

You just can't stand any evidence that NK is a hellhole and take a reflexive moral equivalence stance, just like the far leftists I knew back in the 80s did whenever presented with evidence of what a mess the Soviet Union was. They've never gotten over the humiliation of that whole empire crumbling to dust.