with your cheese(burger)! :can Koreans digest cheese/milk?

actually in the version i have, the translation is "cheeseburgers"...i assume you're talking about the part where he's talking to the government agents on the cell phone on the street.

but he says that the young people in south korea with their cell phones and cheeseburgers, etc. they don't ever worry about the folks in north korea.

Lactose intolerance is caused by the lack of the enzyme lactase in your digestive system to metabolize the lactose (sugar) in milk. Biologically speaking, you're not supposed to still be drinking milk after you're weaned. Because certain populations of humans did, they developed a mutation that allows them to keep producing lactase, and thus drink milk into adulthood without any problems. It should be noted that this concerns a reduction in your body's production of lactase, but not a complete cessation. Even people who are lactose intolerant can usually tolerate about 8 ounces of milk a day. Also, cheese and other dairy products like butter generally contain less lactose than milk itself and would therefore be more easily tolerated.

70 to 75% of adults worldwide have some degree of lactose intolerance. But the distribution, as you noted, varies widely. Areas where there are high levels of lactose intolerance generally correspond to areas where people historically have not consumed milk as adults, which makes sense. The rate is as low as 5% for northern Europeans and more than 90% in some African and Asian countries. The rate is 0 to 20% in the U.S., northern Europe and Australia. It's 80 to 100% in the southern parts of South America and Africa, as well as in east and southeast Asia, including China, Japan, and Korea.

However, in Japan and some other countries where they drink milk more now than they historically have, there is a lower rate of lactose intolerance than you would expect. Even the mutation is a relatively recent occurrence. It all comes down to what you're used to. I don't drink milk a lot anymore, and I know when I drink a lot at once it does sometimes upset my stomach. And I'm Irish and Polish. I think if you grow up in a culture where you drink milk all your life, your body gets used to it, even if you have a predisposition to lactose intolerance. Since most of Asia is like this nowadays, it's not so much an issue anymore. But in any case, lactose intolerance just means you can't drink a large amount of milk (or eat a lot of cheese/butter/ice cream, etc.) but not that you can't have any at all.