I would say extremely similar, not identical. I am Korean and I can trace three of my grandparents to the north in Pyongan province and further trace many ancestors back hundreds of years in these regions.

Autosomal DNA analysis shows that genes are overwhelmingly Korean. The marginal differences (less than 20-25%) are attributed to Manchurian as well as Northern Han Chinese populations, tilted more to Manchurian. I have calculated the ratio of the non-Korean ancestry to be around 60% Manchurian to 40% Chinese (using Xibo/Xibe/Sibe and Beijing Han/CHB as proxies). Keep in mind, southern Manchurian population is more gravitated to East Asian populations rather than Siberian populations (Daur and Hezhen would be intermediaries between the two, Oroqen is pulled toward Siberian). This would cause only slightly higher Siberian DNA in northern Korea than in the south. So there is only slightly more Siberian ancestry detected in me than other Koreans (less than 5%).

Still the results show that even in the north samples should register frequently with Japanese samples as in other Korean samples. I guess this is the result of undifferentiated DNA, more so than recent common descent, of which some portion of genes that read as “Japanese” would show up in one area of Korea and another portion would show up in another region of Korea.

If you look at the history of East Asia, isn’t it likely that these populations simply have a dangerous tendency towards authoritarian/totalitarian government? It is the flipside of having a fairly obedient, conformist population. The wrong circumstances can send the society down a dangerous track. Mao’s China was not that long ago, big picture, neither was the Japanese military regime of the 1930s-40s (which BR Myers claims is the true ideological father of the Kim dynasty). Over the long run it is not really clear that North Korea and South Korea have “different outcomes”, they could be in different points on a historical cycle. Certainly North Korea is very much unlike every other poor country on earth, in terms of literacy, education, organization, but it is very similar to China in the 1960s. In many ways North Korea is already far ahead of Mao’s China in terms of standard of living. People seem unaware how much progress North Korea has actually made in the last 10 years in terms of food security, availability of consumer goods, etc.

Just in terms of future expectations, I look at North Korea and see a country which was more or less destroyed in a devastating war, a country which has spent almost 70 years living under the most oppressive Stalinist dictatorship since Stalin’s dictatorship, one wrought by famine, drug addiction, ills beyond counting, and this country still manages to produce some very high quality intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads to boot. Foreign countries even pay them to send experts in rocketry and nuclear research to help them develop their own weapons programs.

In terms of heritage of genetic advantages for a nation in the modern world, I suspect they’re sitting pretty. Their problems really seem to stem from their civil institutions.

You’re essentially extrapolating data from Han chinese to Koreans. There is likely overlap between them, but regardless, Han are generally distinct from Koreans, unless there’s historical/archaeological evidence to indicate otherwise. And this analysis is likely not considering how chinese have migrated all over within their country quite recently. I’m sure there’s some kind of historical/anthropological data on the differences between SK and NK before the war. Another more informative approach might be on the genetics or outcomes of north koreans outside of NK, but they’re probably very few in number, especially those who are free of control of the NK regime.

Going back to the original post, it’s technically true, but I think it really misses the forest for the trees, in that the original point of comparison between North and South Korea is that the differences between both countries are so incredibly vast that it’s astoundingly unlikely that genetics could account for what we see. You know, the fact SK is a prosperous, safe, technological society and NK is an otherwordly, nightmarish despot. There are of course similarities, such as NK having relatively, stable infrastructure and being able to keep afloat all this time, being able to field a massive army and having it’s own nuclear program, which not all people under similar circumstances would be able to manage, and that *maybe*, on some level, both kores might be disposed towards such an arrangement, but the differences are vast enough.

Also, the division between the two countries is largely circumstantial, in that it was a division that didn’t really exist prior to the war and could have easily ended up farther south or farther north. I have this feeling that if the division ended up a good deal farther north, the areas that would now be under SK control would be little from the rest of SK in terms culture, productivity etc. You could probably pinpoint some kind of cultural/behavioral differences that could have contributed to the outcome of the war, but that would be very hard to properly parse from so many other factors and there’d be essentially a large element of chance of no matter what.

So honestly, this post is a little over the top with the point it’s trying to make. Yes, with what we know of the differences in nations, we can’t say it affirmatively that they’re the same, but with the yawning gap we see, it’s a little unlikely genetics could account for much of it as it might elsewhere.

I have no idea how much of the regional variation in social indicators within England or Germany is explained by non-IQ independent variables like personality traits because we have no regional non-IQ data.

I agree this is one of the weak points in international values studies. I look at mainly non-IQ traits, and while there is some excellent data at the national level (GLOBE study is my favorite, World Values Survey, Pew and Gallup are very good too), sub-national data is rarer than hen’s teeth. It really is a shame.

I will say the E.U. is quite good about gathering sub-national data (at Eurostat), but it tends to be more economics- than personality-focused. Stuff like that Italy corruption map is out there, but you have to search long and hard to find it, and it tends to be single-country focused studies. This is really an area I wish cross-national personality researchers would look more deeply into.

The North Korean Army was equipped by the Russians and trained by the Chinese. Many of the NK Divisions in 1950 had faught in China during WW II. North Korea had a ready made offensively armed military as opposed to poor South Korea which had a defensive military with very little Field Artillery and NO tanks and NO fighter planes….. Was not much of a fight until the intervention.

@ Jayman & @ Anthony – the PLOS One paper had data for the Han majority (93.37% of the 21918 total people sampled); Manchu minority (5.1% of total sample); Mongol minority (0.57% of total sample); Hui minority (0.46% of total); Korean minority (0.29% of total); and Xibe minority (0.14% of total).

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0093082

Chris Davies – There is a small Korean minority north of the Yalu, that apparently resulted from the conquest of that part of “Korea” by other groups, resulting in their incorporation into China. Such a group would likely be somewhat mixed with Manchu or Han or other groups from the vicinity, but there may be more and less “pure Korean” members of that group. Is there any DNA data from the Korean minority in China?

Got no genetic data from North Korea.

However have HLA data for 20,465 Han from Liaoning Province, China, approx. 200 miles north of Pyongyang in North Korea.

Also have considerable data for South Korea [large samples, mainly from Seoul region].

If the Liaoning data is similar to North Koreans, I see a number of alleles/haplotypes indicative of migrations from Central Asia, some with probable origins as far west as NE Africa/Middle East/Persia/Punjab regions. These alleles/haplotypes are at notably lower frequencies in South Korea. While South Korea has higher frequencies of certain other haplotypes.

So in my opinion there almost certainly will be significant genetic differences between North and South Korea.

The intra-country differences in Europe are mostly due to historical migration patterns and, and different marriage patterns. As far as I can tell, the Korean peninsula wasn’t that interesting w.r.t. migrations – the Koreans came and stayed put, and nobody else wanted the place. The Mongols raped and pillaged and killed but didn’t migrate. The Ming and Qing left them alone (mostly). The Japanese came and occupied the peninsula, and according to wiki, over 170k came, many of them interested in farmland. 7-8% of all arable land was Japanese-owned in 1910, rising to over 50% in 1932. Wasn’t the Southern end of the peninsula more farmland and the north more industrial? Then again, the population of the whole peninsula was on the order of tens of millions, so it’s not that big of a dent just looking at pure numbers, unless they formed some kind of endogamous minority (unlikely, since the Japanese state encouraged intermarriage).

We just have to go with absence of evidence. There’s no “smoking-gun” that would point to any kind of significant north/south genetic difference apart from drift. As other commentors have pointed out, it’s more likely to be an east-west axis anyway. You shouldn’t be privileging this hypothesis.

Genetic changes SINCE partition though, is the more interesting question …

“I have not declared the two Koreas are the same. I just believe the genetic difference probably isn’t worth talking about.”

“I have not declared that all human races (as if “race” were even a real/legitimate concept, lol) are the same. I just believe the genetic difference probably isn’t worth talking about.”

When I visited South Korea, my hosts specifically mention the northernmost of the three kingdoms as a kind of precursor to North Korea, saying they were more of a horse-riding, warrior culture…

Poverty, especially regional poverty, isn’t necessarily a good correlation for either IQ or social traits. Did the Japanese do any psychometric studies, or even halfway decent ethnographic ones?

After the collapse of North Korea, it will be impossible to determine for a while how much of the difference is because of genetic/heritable variation among Koreans, because so many Northerners have been starved, and have adapted their behaviors to their environment, that their behavior patterns will reflect environment much more strongly than in most industrialized countries.

The Japanese did conduct at least 5 censuses in occupied Korea. The poorest areas were on the southern coast. Also at least 1 million people were forcibly located from south to north because Japanese industry was located in Manchuria and that’s where the labour shortages were.

(Hopefully Jayman will not interpet this as further arguing with him…)

very nice! carry on.

Yes I had just posted a topographical map of the Korean peninsula at my site.

The Korean Peninsula has historically been split on an east west axis because of the mountain range going down the length of the peninsula. People from the east west coasts of S. Korea still do not necessarily like each other to this day.
North Korea has been splitting itself for generations with those most loyal to the regime the closest to the capital who receive greater benefits. Those not seen as loyal are moved further away from the capital. It will be interesting to see that house of horrors when the Norths cult of personality finally crumbles. So bottom line South Korea Good. North Korea Bad. Cultural differences have historically been east west not north south.

How much sorting was there among North Korean refugees to the south? Escaping North Korea after 1953 was hard enough that most of the movement would have happened during wartime, which I would think would be much more random than at other times.

There may be Japanese data from between 1910 and 1937 which could tell you things about variations across Korea; certainly something a little more detailed than the 1911 Britannica’s statement that “The native population is absolutely homogeneous”. (Which is evidence that the differences were small enough to have not been noticed by people studying Korea, but Korea’s contacts with potential Britannica authors and correspondents was pretty limited even as late as 1910.) Unfortunately, whatever data there is would probably be either in Japanese or Korean, leaving most HBD bloggers and commenters out. Perhaps “Spandrell” might be able to find something?

Is there data on the outcomes of Koreans who fled the North during the war? That would tell you something. Also, while Seoul has drawn people from all over Korea, how much regional variation is there between the non-metropolitan provinces?

There’s plenty of “behavioral” data available at subnational granularity: crime, alcohol consumption, religious variation (both denominational and things like church attendance), hell, even education. There hasn’t, to my knowledge, been a lot of work done correlating those things to IQ, but the data is there.

Max,

PE’s point is simple and uncontroversial. He never claimed the Koreas are identical populations. What he claimed is that there’s enough circumstantial evidence to suggest the differences are probably small.

Since JayMan and many others in the HBD community infer things like this all the time from limited data sets, what’s the problem?

hopefully jayman will allow me this clarification to Max : I had said, “I have not declared the two Koreas are the same. I just believe the genetic difference probably isn’t worth talking about.”

pseudoerasmus coming off as bizarrely unhinged here. How can someone who accepts the fact of human microevolution deny that North/South Korea’s populations are genetically distinct? The only question we can’t answer (yet) is the extent of the differentiation. To deny that there must be SOME is to be a flat-earther.

Korea ‘s three kingdoms:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms_of_Korea

I have zero doubt that mating patterns have something to do with intelligence, trust, libertarian/authoritarian/egalitarian, etc.

But so far that does not help us with knowing (1) the size of the correlation between traits in European regions and traits in US regions ; and (2) whether the persistent social traits are best predicted by IQ or some other metric.

that should be the degree of PERSISTENCE between social characteristics….

“Not as clean as you think. See “l’explication de l’idéologie” | hbd* chick

Clean not in the explanatory part, but in the output part (degree of democracy).

No, regional data for within European countries, other than Italy on corruption. Where are those ?

Perhaps you missed HBD Chick’s work?

I wish they were quantified.

We apply what we know and simple logic. Number one, we know that all human behavioral traits are heritable.

Doesn’t tell us whether the heritability of these traits is best predicted by IQ or “other factors”.

We know that regional groups within nations exist which are discernible genetically. We have historical information that tell us that the selective pressures across these regions were different, if only even slightly. We have a ton of social characteristics that are correlated with know historical factors (e.g., mating patterns, settlement and migration patterns, etc.). We know that these societal characteristics are highly persistent and resistant to change, even under deliberate attempts to do so. And we have Occam’s Razor tying all these together that indicates that the genes that differ between these regional groups is likely largely or entirely behind these differences.

Non sequitur. Heritability is not the issue.

(1) You still can’t tell whether the persistence of the social characteristics is mediated by IQ or something else.

(2) You don’t know the degree of social characteristics between Europe and the USA, because you don’t have the European regional data other than IQ. Or do you ?

actually, not the Oder-Neisse line but the Stettin-Trieste line of Churchill down to the Gulf of Thailand.

I like Staffan’s analogy of authoritarian culture with alcoholism.

A cruel but convenient natural experiment performed by history is that there is a continuous geographical space of former communist states from the Oder-Neisse line to the Gulf of China ! The “democratic gradient” is a relatively straightforward matter over this space but there is also a separate “transition to markets” gradient over the same space. There are some transition indices but there’s a gradient by region as well for which there aren’t data unfortunately but it’s theoretically easy to construct.

of course if you do have regional personality data for the UK and Germany I stand corrected but can you then produce them

No, I am not missing the point. (1) I have operated using your assumption that the two Koreas are not exactly the same, and using your comparators, I have argued that we should expect that the two Koreas probably have little variation, relative to those comparators. I have not declared the two Koreas are the same. I just believe the genetic difference probably isn’t worth talking about. (2) Yes, there is more to behavioural variation than is captured by cognitive ability metrics. Elsewhere I have argued there is indeed a sizeable variation in social competence or personality traits holding IQ constant — I even contrasted France and England politically using such an assumption. Given Staffan’s IQ breaking points blogpost, the “social” variation seems greatest at that middle range of IQ, and I’m writing something on Argentina and Chile using that idea.

But I like data, and test scores are what we have most in abundance. PISA scores, SAT scores, etc. are close proxies for IQ. IQ is an independent explanatory variable.

But that’s hardly the only reason for the significant differences that have existed across Britain. As Albion’s Seed and HBD Chick’s subsequent work on the matter demonstrate, the population in different parts of the island evolved under a degree of relative isolation, enough so that important differences in their behavioral traits emerged, which became exaggerated when people from different parts of the island came to North America. As well, there is a reason I used the corruption map of Italy. The point here, a point that remains key, there is more heritable variation between people besides IQ.

But there’s no data on these behavioural traits for regions within Europe, by which I mean, you have no non-IQ independent variables. You only have the single dependent variable — corruption, but only for Italy. One might of course build an index of several social indicators — as Staffan did in his IQ Breaking points blogpost — and treat THAT as a proxy explanatory variable. But for that you probably need more than 5 variables. Chuck used a social progress index of 52 components and got a correlation with IQ of 0.82. But you produced regional corruption data only for Italy.

I know you are pushing the principle, rather than the fact. So you stress a lot of qualitative factors. But the size of coefficients matters. I have no idea how much of the regional variation in social indicators within England or Germany is explained by non-IQ independent variables like personality traits because we have no regional non-IQ data. For all you know IQ can account for most of the similarities between regions in England & Germany and settler regions in the United States.

I believe that’s an implication of Staffan’s IQ breaking points. If your IQ is 105 the variance in social traits is smaller than if your IQ is 95.

True, it’s a frivolous assumption. And it would be equally frivolous to assume that genetic similarity with different outcomes means nurture over nature. If indeed they are made of pretty much the same stuff, they could both be prone to authoritarian regimes, indeed the whole region could, as it’s characterized by collectivistic culture. Even South Korea, Japan and the smaller elite cliques of the region that represent the pinnacle of civilization in East Asia have never reached a Western (or Norhtwestern) level of democracy and human rights.

So maybe we should think of Korea as two alcoholics (a highly heritable condition) – one sober and one drunk? Superficially they look as each others opposites but we all know better than to offer the sober one a drink.

Yes, the devil is in the details.

IQ (Lynn)

England & Wales 100.5
Scotland 97

North Italy-Friulia-Venezia : 104.5
South Italy-Sicily : 89
other southern Italian regions ~90

Japan (PISA from Kura)

highest-score prefecture (Fukui) and lowest (Okinawa) : 0.8 STD difference

But if you remove Okinawa (a very distinct place, even a different native language, not considered “Yamato”), then basically the spread between highest & lowest amongst the remaining 99% of Japanese is 1/2 STD.

Germany (PISA 2006)

— all the former DDR Bundesländer scored at the mean for Germany, except Saxony which got the highest PISA average in the country.

The PISA/IQ gradient in Germany is basically between Northwest and Southwest. SW is higher than NW.

— the spread between highest (Saxony) and lowest (Bremen) is ~1/2 STD.

— But Bremen is a Stadtstaat (city state), not a full sized Land, and the score is probably depressed by immigrants. The full-sized Bundesland with the lowest score is North Rhine Westpalia. Then the spread is <0.4 STD.

In the case of the UK, the north-south divide would have been exaggerated by the southward migration of talentend northerners. The south of England is full of Scottish and Danish surnames. (Before the Norman conquest the north of England was Danish-occupied whilst the south was Anglo-Saxon.)

There is no reason at all to compare the Koreas with Italy. There is zero reason a priori, to do so.

I would argue the spread between North and South Korea would be smaller than between the regions in England, Germany or Japan.

Why ? Because unlike Japan, especially, the population in the Korean peninsula is mostly concentrated in closely proximity.