While the world focuses on North Korea’s nuclear program and the stalled six-party talks, a second set of negotiations with profound implications for the Korean Peninsula are occurring beyond public view.The primary participants are the governments of North and South Korea, the United States and the World Food Program, the United Nations food aid agency. At stake is whether the North Korean regime will turn back the clock on economic reforms, strengthen political control over the population and torpedo an ongoing humanitarian aid effort.
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Must reading. Marc Noland knows more about the Korean economy than anyone outside North Korea (and probably inside).
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If I remember correctly, the gist of Marc’s analysis was that reunifying Korea would be fantastically expensive, for the simple reason that you have an entire nation (the North) that needs to be brought almost all the way from poverty to industrialized democracy. The North would be an anchor on the South for many decades. Small wonder that the South acts as if it has mixed feelings about reunification …