Economics
Korean Unification Costs Clouded by Dearth of Data on North
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South Korea’s economy is 43-times bigger than North Korea’s. Or at least that’s what officials estimate in their struggle to pin down the cost of a possible reunification on the peninsula.
About $500 billion would be needed to develop North Korea’s economy over 20 years after reuniting, according to a report released this week by South Korea’s Financial Services Commission. By contrast, the West German economy was 10-times larger than East Germany’s when the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, the financial watchdog said. West Germany spent about $2 trillion rebuilding a single country, some estimates show.