154-1-696
SOUTH KOREANS dread the prospect of renewed fighting across the “38th parallel” that divides their country from the communist North. But not all of them savour the alternative ending for their cold war: rapprochement and reunification.
North Korea’s indigence is almost as scary as its belligerence. The collapse of its rogue dictatorship—improbable but not unthinkable—would replace a military threat with a variety of economic perils, including a possible flood of cheap migrant labour and costly obligations to support the North’s people and infrastructure. Germany’s example is hardly reassuring. Two decades after reunification, the East still subtracts heavily from Germany’s budget and adds greatly to its unemployment figures.
Before the last Korean war in 1950, the North was home to most of the country’s heavy industry. As late as 1975, its income per head still exceeded the South’s, according to Eui-Gak Hwang of Korea University in Seoul. “Obviously, sooner or later the country must be reunited,” wrote Joan Robinson, a Cambridge economist, in 1977, “by absorbing the South into socialism.”
South Korea’s central bank reckons that North Korea’s annual income per person was only $960 in 2009, or about 5% of South Korea’s. (This estimate values the North’s output using South Korea’s prices and its exchange rate against the dollar.) This disparity dwarfs the income gap between the two Germanys on the eve of reunification (see chart). Poorer than East Germany, North Korea is also bigger. Its population of 24m is about half the size of the South’s, whereas East Germany’s was only about a quarter the size of the West’s.

A. 어휘
savour 맛보다, 玩味(완미). rapprochement 화해, 친선.
indigence 가난, 貧困(빈곤). scary 무서운. belligerence 好戰性(호전성).
collapse 붕괴. rogue 악한. improbable 있을 법하지 않은.
perils 위험. migrant 이주자, 철새. obligations 의무, 책임.
infrastructure 기반, 기초, 하부구조. reassuring 안심시키는, 위안을 주는.
subtract 빼다, 감하다, 控除(공제)하다. figures 數値(수치).
heavy industry 중공업. exceed 초과하다, 凌駕(능가)하다.
absorb 흡수하다. value 값을 치다. exchange rate 환률.
disparity 불균형, 不同(부동). dwarf 작게 보이게 하다, 난쟁이.
a quarter 1/4.