US Authoritarianism

They were a larger economy than sk at first

They were a larger economy after decades of domestic rebuilding, while SK was left to languish under a brutal right-wing military dictator. Then the US transitioned the SK economy into a tech manufacturing hub and granted a handful of influential families access to the limitless low-interst credit window of the Federal Reserve. The South became a workhouse for the American retail electronics market, where Korean workers got paid pennies to work long hours in dark warehouses to make low-cost bobbles for their western peers. This allowed these six influential families to go on a construction bonanza using the leverage afforded from foreign export revenues. Cheap steel from China combined with the fossil fuels imported from Russia and the Middle East, allowed the SK economy to soar past its heavily sanctioned NK peer... on paper.

But the real legacy of the Korean economy for its people enormous entrenched personal debts. The South Korean economy is a product of cheap foreign lending. Household indebtedness to gross disposable income ratio in South Korea from 2012 to 2022 has grown from 152% to 203%.

South Korea's prosperity is entirely predicated on its continued access to cheap credit and cheap foreign commodities imports. North Korea's stalled growth is a consequence of its embargo, the continued need to deter a large military presence on its southern border, and its need to build and maintain an economy entirely within one half of a small peninsula.

But please, go to North Korea right now and start talking shit about Lil Un

Please go to your local police department and start screaming obscenities at whomever is on duty.