Quote:
Originally Posted by Daradon
I heard somewhere that 30 years ago the average South Korean was afraid the North would spill over the border and attack. Now, the average South Korean is worried about unification.
It's almost a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
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It wasn't that long ago that North Korea had the more vibrant economy with a larger GNP then the South.
But the governments went the opposite ways. The South dumped their military based paranoid government and went to a capitalist version of pseudo democracy.
The North went from a paranoid yet eastern bloc trading state that used its mineral wealth to some pretty good respect. Then they went batsh%t with the isolationalist self reliance crap and got obsessed with the military state and they collapsed.
While Granpa Kim was fairly corrupt he pushed the edge in terms of agriculture and manufacturing hero projects. When his son got into power that went out the window as North Korea decided to become a heavy industry based society that didn't make anything that well. Then he upped the corruption and traded every bit of hard western currency for watches and cars and liquor and expensive castles and the bottom fell out.
The Korean split didn't help much as South Korea pretty much got all of the good farm land and shipping routes. The North got little in the way of farm land, tonnes of ordinary metals and other minerals and little in the way of portage.