The World of Kim Jong-un
October 2, 2017
There have been heightened concerns over the behavior of North Korea for months now, but what do we really know about this small country that neighbors China, Russia, and South Korea. A recent BBC article provides some valuable perspective on North Korea and how it compares to its alter ego, South Korea.
Early European visitors described the Korean peninsula as resembling a ‘sea in a heavy gale’ because of the many mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Kim Il-sung founded North Korea in 1948 and his family dynasty has ruled the country ever since, with control passing first to his son, Kim Jong-il, and then to his grandson, Kim Jong-un. By comparison, South Korea has seen 12 presidents since 1948 spanning 19 terms in office.
During the period since the partition of Korea, the political and economic systems followed by the North and the South could hardly be more different. The North has essentially been a dictatorship which has brutally implemented policies heavily reminiscent of Stalin. The South has gradually moved to an open economic system based on democracy. The difference in results is profound and can be seen in many ways.
As of 2015 the North’s population of just over 25 million people had 3.2 million mobile phones. By contrast, South Korea had 58.9 million cell phones for a population of 51 million – more than one per person! Almost all North Koreans are only permitted access to the country’s ‘private internet’ – effectively a closed intranet operating on a national scale. Compare that to South Korea where about 81.5% of the population have open access to the real internet. 97% of North Korea’s roads are unpaved versus just 8% of those in the South. The poor quality of the roads in the North makes sense given only 11 in 1,000 people even own a car! The main export from North Korea in 2015 was 952 million coal briquettes most of which went to China, while the South exported 63.8 billion circuit boards. The exports of coal to China have however been substantially curtailed by sanctions since February 2017.
One statistic where the North does lead is in the number of active members of the armed forces. It has the world’s fourth largest army with around 1,190,000 military personnel, almost twice as many as the South, and spends approximately 25% of GDP on the military. Despite its military might, the North continues to suffer from food shortages which might partly explain a life expectancy for its people that trails the South by almost 12 years. It might also explain the fact that North Korean men are 1.2 to 3.1 inches shorter than their southern male counterparts. Until 1973 the two countries were pretty evenly matched in terms of wealth, but since then there has been a substantial divergence. By 2011 the GDP of N. Korea stood at around $1,800 per person compared to $32,400 for S. Korea.
Where this all ends is anyone’s guess, but it is pretty clear that developing a nuclear deterrent remains a focused and high priority for Kim Jong-un, who fears that without such weapons his fate may be no different to that of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghaddafi.
Nick Hoffman
