Interesting Maps

USA, probably

Iceland used to grow banana plants in geothermally-heated greenhouses, and harvest the fruit. But they only ever did it on a small scale, and only for a period from about 1940 (when the General Unpleasantness meant banana imports ceased) until about 1960. After the war banana production was kept viable by hefty tariffs on imported bananas but, when the tariffs were removed, the industry folded. There's still a tiny product, but it's not commercial.

They were regarded as "manufactured" for tax purposes. Ireland had a 10% corporation tax rate for profits derived from manufacturing, but the definition in the Taxes Acts of "manufacture" was so widely written that it included the process of ripening bananas by exposing them to ethylene gas.

Fun fact no. 1: although it's no longer characterised as "manufacturing" for tax purposes (because there's no point — the 10% tax rate for manufacturing is gone) banana-ripening still goes on in Ireland. Fyffes has a big warehouse for the purpose in Balbriggan.

Fun fact no 2: Ireland isn't unusual in this regard. Transporting bananas from where they are grown to where they are going to be eaten is much easier and therefore cheaper when the bananas are unripe — they don't bruise, spoil, etc. So it's standard to ship them unripe from the plantation to some location close to the final destination market and then ripe them.

Fun fact no. 3: Europe's largest producer of bananas is in fact France — they grow them in Martinique and Guadaloupe, both of which are part of metropolitan France.

A spot of googling reveals that, in 2023, Iceland exported USD 877k worth of bananas, nearly all to Greenland.

In the same year Iceland imported USD 7.991 million worth of bananas, mostly from Ecuador.

So, two conclusions:

First, Iceland is a substantial net importer of bananas. Exports are likely to remain very low, since it's hard to see how Iceland-grown bananas can compete on world markets.

Secondly, I suspect (but I don't know) that the bananas exported from Iceland were mostly not grown there; they were grown in Ecuador and then ripened in Iceland for consumption in or near Iceland — hence the concentration of exports to Greenland. SFAIK the only banana plantation remaning in Iceland is maintained by the Agricultural University of Iceland and it's non-commercial; they use it for training and research purposes, and most of the bananas grown there are eaten by the students and staff.

Korean is more a syllabary than an alphabet. Words are split into Syllables which are built from characters for each letter/sound.