The Washington Post has a good chart illustrating the economic legacy of North Korean dictators Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. It compares the GDP per capital of North Korea and South Korea over the last 40 years. It speaks for itself:
Brad Plumer writes:
During the early 1970s, North Korea’s economy stagnated, with GDP per capita flatlining until Kim Il Sung’s death. Then, in 1994, after Kim Jong Il took over, the economy started shrinking noticeably, per capita incomes fell, and the country became dependent on emergency U.N. food aid to stave off further famines. North Korea became, as Eberstadt puts it, “the world’s first and only industrialized economy to lose the capacity to feed itself.” (That said, there’s evidence that North Korea was growing weakly in the last few years of Kim Jong Il’s rule).
At the moment, North Korea’s per capita income is less than 5 percent of the South’s. As the Atlantic Council’s Peter Beck puts it, “Each year the dollar value of South Korea’s GDP expansion equals the entire North Korean economy.”
(H/T to Peter Suderman.)
KJI achieved all of the goals of progressive Democrats and OWS, a society in which everyone was equal, the wealth was distributed fairly, and the national carbon footprint was comparable to the Paleolithic Era.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBTW, there is something this one simple chart doesn't reveal: South Korea was under the rule of a dictator during the initial period of this divergence (from 1962 to 1979) as well.
Park Chung-Hee just happened to be one of those rare benevolent ones (and one that was fortunately assassinated as he became not so benevolent).
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“Each year the dollar value of South Korea’s GDP expansion equals the entire North Korean economy.”
PROOF! that the South is stealing the wealth from the Peoples of NK. Who knew they were that clever?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor you literalists-- this is sarcasm.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSure, South Korea’s GDP has skyrocketed by comparison, but what about their income gap! North Korea is a much more economically fair. There’s minimal disparity between a million people who starve to death vs. those able to survive by eating grass. This is why the left’s obsession about income is vain and probably immoral. It’s unconcerned about relative prosperity or upward mobility, just material equality. I’d be willing to bet most lefties could get pretty opinionated about the NBA strike, a money squabble between millionaires and billionaires. North Korea? Not so much. For all their carping about fairness, global corporations, consumerism, sweatshops etc; I’ve never heard of a liberal protest or march to express outrage about one of most inhumane systems on the planet
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut income inequality grew in South Korea, while it shrank in the north.
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