The biggest difference is North Korea is an economy based on communism. Because of the dictator of N.

Korea, Kim Jong Ill, there is limited commerce that is traded with other nations. As far as i'm aware the
developed world has economic sanctions against doing any kind of commerce with N. Korea. This leaves
the country isolated by itself. A large majority of the GDP or Gross Domestic Product goes toward
military spending and Research and development projects.

South Korea has open trade with the developed world and therefore is in a much better economic
situation. Unlike N. Korea, people are not starving regularly and being arrested for trying to practice
human rights. If you look around the USA you will see many products of S. Korea, including Kia cars and
a large number of computer chips. They pretty much export any kind of consumer technology. S. Korea
is in the top 20 in the world when it comes to economic growth. Seoul is one of the most growing cities
in the world


Saying that the North had both an agricultural and an industrial economy using free labour while the
South concentrated on a plantation economy is true but also insufficient.

The salary of a working man in the South was sometimes as much as ten times higher than the one of his
counterpart in the North due to:
1. The fact that plantation offered white workers a steady supply of well-paid job (white work consisted
in managing black slaves so had a manager pay).
2. The cost of living in the South was significantly higher than in the North due to greater costs to bring
food and other necessities from the North and the exceptional buying power of the workers in the big
plantations.

On the other hand the North, with a steady supply of cheap labour from Europe and the countryside
(mechanization in the field meant less labourers were required so many moved to Chicago and NYC). As
a result, an entrepreneur would rather develop his factory where the wages were low rather than in the
South, where the salary of a single Georgian could cover the wages of up to ten workers in Illinois.

Furthermore, cheap workforce meant that it was cheaper to build infrastructures such as railroads,
bridges and canals in the North. These infrastructures in turn meant that the price of everything would
be decreasing in the North (cheaper transportation equals cheaper goods). So you'd have a virtuous
cycle in the North with low labour costs bringing industrualisation and industrialisation keeping labour
costs low.

So economically (and socially) you virtually had two countries, one modernising rapidly, the other seeing
this happening, feeling frustrated without realizing that its own policies caused that retard.
North Korea is the commonly used short form name for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or
DPRK), a state located in East Asia, in the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, with its capital and
largest city being the city of Pyongyang.

To the south, separated by the Korean Demilitarized Zone, lies South Korea, with which it formed the
Korean Empire until its occupation and division following World War II. At its northern Amnok River
border are China and, separated by the Tumen River in the extreme north-east, Russia.

North Korea is a one party state.The country's government styles itself as following the Juche ideology of
self reliance, developed by Kim Il-sung, the country's former leader. The current leader is Kim Jong-il, the
late president Kim Il-sung's son. Relations are strongest with other officially socialist states: Vietnam,
Laos, especially China and Russia, as well as with Cambodia and Myanmar. Following a major famine in
the early 1990s, due partly to the collapse of the Soviet Union (previously a major economic partner),
leader Kim Jong-il instigated the "Military-First" policy in 1995, increasing economic concentration and
support for the military.



South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea and often referred to as Korea (Korean: , IPA:
[t.han.min.

ana ), lis a presidential republic in East Asia, occupying the southern half
of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by China to the west, Japan to the east and North Korea to the
north. South Korea's capital and largest city is Seoul, the second largest metropolitan city in the world.

The Korean Peninsula was first inhabited as early as the Lower Paleolithic. Following the unification of
the Three Korean Kingdoms under Silla in AD 668, Korea went through the Goryeo and Joseon Dynasty
as one nation until the end of the Korean Empire in 1910. After division, South Korea was established in
1948 and has since developed a successful democracy, maintaining a strong alliance with the United
States and its allies. Most South Koreans hope to reunify with reunification with North Korea.

South Korea is a major economic power and one of the wealthiest countries in Asia. It has grown rapidly
since the 1960s, and is now highly developed and is the fourth largest economy in Asia and 13th largest
in the world. Forming the G20 industrial nations and the world's top ten exporters, it is an APEC and
OECD member, defined as a High Income Nation by the World Bank and an Advanced Economy by the
IMF and CIA. A major non-NATO ally, it has the world's sixth largest armed forces and the tenth largest
defence budget in the world. The Asian Tiger is leading the Next Eleven nations and is still among the
world's fastest growing developed countries. Koreans refer to their strong economic growth as the
"Miracle on the Han River".

South Korea is a leading science and technology nation. It has an advanced and modern infrastructure
and is a world leader in information technology such as electronics, semiconductors, LCD displays,
computers and mobile phones. It is also a big steel-maker, shipbuilderand oil refiner and one of the
world's top five automobile producers.


South Korea is a demiocratic, open relatively more free market developed economy with high
standard of living and advanced technology. As agains this, North Korea is a communist
dictatoship oppressing the citizens whose standard of living is poor: it is closed command
economy that is opaque and allegedly engaged in illegal trafficing in drugs, weapms technology
andcounterfiet foreign currency. Now get into details and visit the sources listed/
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is a country in East Asia in
the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, with its capital in the city of Pyongyang. At its
northern border are China on the Yalu River and Russia on the Tumen River, in the far
northeastern corner of the country. To the south, it is bordered by South Korea, with which it
formed one nation until the division following World War II.
North Korea is a communist dictatorship following the Juche ideology, developed by Kim Il-
sung, the country's first president. The current leader is Kim Jong-il, the late president Kim Il-
sung's son. Relations are strong with other traditional socialist states, Vietnam, Laos, and, often,
China, as well as with Cambodia and Burma. Following a major famine in the early 1990s after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major economic partner, leader Kim Jong-il instated the
"Military-First" policy in 1995, increasing economic concentration and support for the military.
Multiple international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch, have accused North Korea of having one of the worst human rights records of any
nation. Defectors have testified to the existence of detention camps, reporting torture, murder,
and medical experimentation.
North Korea's culture is officially protected and heavily promoted by the government. The Mass
Games are government-organized events glorifying its two leaders, involving over 100,000
performers. In July 2004, the Complex of Goguryeo Tombs became the first site in the country to
be included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. North Korea, one of the world's most
centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital
stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts.
Industrial and power output have declined in parallel. During what North Korea called the
"peaceful construction" period before the Korean War, the fundamental task of the economy was
to overtake the level of output and efficiency attained toward the end of the Japanese occupation;
to restructure and develop a viable economy reoriented toward the communist-bloc countries;
and to begin the process of socializing the economy. Nationalization of key industrial enterprises
and land reform, both of which were carried out in 1946, laid the groundwork for two successive
one-year plans in 1947 and 1948, respectively, and the Two-Year Plan of 1949-50. It was during
this period that the piece-rate wage system and the independent accounting system began to be
applied and that the commercial network increasingly came under state and cooperative
ownership.
North Korea possesses extensive economic resources with which to build a modern economy.
These include sizable deposits of coal, other minerals, and nonferrous metals. The river systems
of the Yalu, Tumen, and Taedong, and lesser rivers supplement North Korea's coal reserves and
form an abundant source of power. Although the mountainous terrain prohibits paddy rice
cultivation except in the coastal lowlands, corn, wheat, and soybeans grow well on dry field
plateaus. The country's hilly areas also provide for timber forests, livestock grazing, and
orchards. North Korea inherited the basic infrastructure of a modern economy at the end of the
Japanese colonial era (1910-45) and achieved considerable success in spite of the socialist
government's restrictive controls of labor, capital, and rates of consumption. These controls had a
cumulative effect, and by the beginning of the 1960s, the economy had reached a stage where
delays and bottlenecks began to grow. Slow economic growth continued into the 1970s and
1980s. Based on Juche, the self-reliant economic policy emphasizes heavy industry. This policy,
coupled with economic difficulties, has resulted in a poor record of exports, chronic trade
deficits, and a sizable external debt, as well as foreign trade primarily oriented toward other
communist countries. At the outset of the 1990s, North Korea's economy was in a deep slump
and in great disarray, and was significantly behind its neighbour, the Republic of Korea (South
Korea), which has become a world-class economic power. North Korea's economy remains one
of the world's last centrally planned systems. The role of market allocation is sharply limited -
mainly in the rural sector where peasants sell produce from small private plots. There are almost
no small businesses. Although there have been scattered and limited attempts at decentralization,
as of mid-1993, P'yongyang's basic adherence to a rigid centrally planned economy continues, as
does its reliance on fundamentally non-pecuniary incentives. As the country faced the 2000's,
more famines came, although South Korea aided the country with fertilizer and livestock
shipments. In addition, the nuclear weapons program in 2006 created sanctions against the
country. The collapse of socialist governments around the world in 1991, particularly North
Korea's principal benefactor, the Soviet Union, have forced the already depressed North Korean
economy to fundamentally realign its foreign economic relations. Economic exchanges with
South Korea have even begun in earnest. A recent attempt at creating Chinese-style economic
zones is representative of North Korea's current movement towards capitalism. About 81% of
North Korea's terrain consists of high mountain ranges and partially forested mountains and hills
separated by deep, narrow valleys and small, cultivated plains. The most rugged areas are the
north and east coasts. Good harbours are found on the eastern coast. Pyongyang, the capital, near
the country's west coast, is located on the Taedong River.
Although most North Korean citizens live in cities and work in factories, agriculture remains a
rather high 25% of total GNP, although output has not recovered to the levels of the early 1990s.
While trade with the South has expanded since 1988, no physical links between the two remain,
and the infrastructure of the North is generally poor and outdated.
North Korea suffers from chronic food shortages, brought about by the combined effects of a
reclusive regime, successive natural disasters, structural constraints such as little arable land
and a short growing season as well as the fact that food products are deliberately diverted
away from citizens and into the military. These shortages were exacerbated by record floods in
the summer of 1995 and continued shortages of fertilizer and parts. In response to international
appeals, the US provided 500,000 tons of humanitarian food aid in the period July 1999-June
2000 through the UN World Food Programme and through US private voluntary organizations.
The North Korean government has repeatedly been accused by Western governments and their
agencies of engaging in a wide range of illegal activities abroad - using the cover provided by
North Korea's status as a sovereign state. These include the trade in weapons technology, drug
manufacturing and trafficking, as well as the manufacture and export of counterfeit cigarettes
and other consumer goods. Among the most spectacular, North Korea has been accused by
Western authorities of making almost perfect counterfeit United States dollars, known as
Superdollars. Due to the closed nature of the North Korean system, independent assessments are
difficult. The North Korean government itself has consistently denied such allegations,
dismissing them as propaganda. On the one hand, large numbers of counterfeit bills have been
seized from the port of Newark and in Russia and traced back to North Korea. South Korea's
National Intelligence Service has reported that the North is not counterfeiting U.S. currency.
Record of Economic Performance
A lack of reliable data inhibits an accurate quantitative assessment of North Korea's economic
performance. In mid-1993 North Korea remains one of the most secretive nations in the world,
limiting the release of its economic data to the outside world and, for that matter, to its own
population. Until about 1960, North Korea released economic data relatively more freely.
Beginning in the 1960s, the publication of economic data began to dwindle dramatically; the
withholding of information coincided with the beginning of the economy's slowdown. The small
amount of data that is published suffers from ambiguities and gaps and--more often than not--is
in the form of percentages that do not provide base figures or explain the precise meaning of
aggregated data. Moreover, North Korean macroeconomic aggregates such as national income,
which is based on Marxist definitions, has to be modified in order to be comparable to customary
Western standards. In the 1980s and early 1990s, only limited quantitative or qualitative
information about the North Korean economy was available. Quantitative information on foreign
trade is a welcome exception because the statistical returns from North Korea's trade partners are
gathered by such international organizations as the United Nations (UN) and the International
Monetary Fund, and South Korean organizations such as the National Unification Board.
Estimating gross national product is a difficult task because of the dearth of economic data, the
national income accounting procedures based on the Marxist definition of production, and the
problem of choosing an appropriate rate of exchange for the North Korean Won- the
nonconvertible North Korean currency. The South Korean government's estimate placed North
Korea's GNP in 1991 at US$22.9 billion, or US$1,038 per capita. This estimate of economic
accomplishment pales next to South Korea's GNP of US$237.9 billion with a per capita income
of US$5,569 that same year. North Korea's GNP in 1991 showed a 5.2 percent decline over
1989, and preliminary indications were that the decline would continue. In contrast, South
Korea's GNP grew by 9.3 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, in 1990 and 1991. It should be
noted that due to North Korea's isolation, statistical data are sparse, and what official statistics
are released are thought to be exaggerated. Therefore, all economical data regarding North Korea
must be used with caution.
South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea (ROK) (Korean: , IPA:
|tc:.han.min.quk
`
|, listen (helpinIo)) is an East Asian state on the southern halI oI the Korean
Peninsula. To the north, it is bordered by North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea),
with which it was united until 1945. To the west, across the Yellow Sea, lies China (People's
Republic of China) and to the southeast, across the Korea Strait, lies Japan. Approximately one-
half of South Korea's population lives in or near the capital Seoul, the country's largest city.
Seoul is one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world, a major centre of business and
commerce in Asia and home to many of the world's largest transnational corporations such as
Samsung, Hyundai, SK and LG.
While the government officially embraced Western-style democracy from its founding,
presidential elections suffered from rampant irregularities. It was not until 1987 that direct and
fair presidential elections were held, largely prompted by popular demonstrations. South Korea
had one of the fastest economic development in the world since the 1960s and is now the 3rd
largest economy in Asia and the 11th largest economy in the world. Up until the 1990s, South
Korea has been part of the Four Asian Tigers and a Newly-industrialized country but upon
entering the 21st century, South Korea gained developed status and is defined as a High Income
Nation according to the World Bank. The United Nation rates South Korea as a Prosperous
Economy and the country is both part of the CIA and IMF list of advanced economies. South
Korea is a Next Eleven country and also part of the G20 Industrial Nations. South Korea's HDI is
rated at High with 0.912 by the Human Development Index and the country joined the OECD in
1996, an organization for developed nations only.
South Korea is one of the world's most technologically & scientifically advanced countries; it
has the fourth highest number and proportion of broadband Internet users among the OECD
countries[2] and is a global leader in electronics, digital displays, semiconductor devices, mobile
phones and hightech gadgets, headed by the two chaebols, Samsung and LG. South Korea also
has the world's 3rd biggest steel producer, POSCO and is the 5th largest car manufacturing
nation, headed by Hyundai Kia Automotive Group. South Korea is the world's largest
shipbuilder, lead by several multinational corporations such as Hyundai Heavy Industries and
Samsung Heavy Industries. Other important industries of South Korea include robotics and
biotechnology, with the world's second humanoid robot, EveR-1 and the world's first cloned dog,
Snuppy.
The economy of South Korea is the third largest in Asia and the twelfth largest in the world, in
terms of market exchange nominal GDP as of 2006. In the aftermath of the Korean War, South
Korea grew from being one of the world's poorest countries to one of its richest. From the mid to
late twentieth century, it has enjoyed one of the fastest rates of prolonged economic growth in
modern world history. The nations per capita gross national product has grown Irom only $100
in 1963 to $24,500 in 2007. This phenomenon has been referred to as the "Miracle on the Han
River."
The South Korean economy focused on heavy industry during the 1970s and 1980s. The
economy began to reach maturity in the 1990s as exponential growth slowed to a robust rate
averaging 6.5 percent. The rapid economic growth of the late 1980s was boosted by the hosting
of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, as well as the co-hosting of 2002 FIFA World Cup. In
1996, South Korea became a member of the OECD, a milestone in its development history. The
service sector has grown to comprise about two-thirds of GDP. During this period, Korean
workers' wages increased considerably, leading labour-intensive industries to move elsewhere,
such as China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
Recently, South Korea produced a plan to become the world's leading IT nation in just 5 years.
With public funds, the government began to actively support South Korea's native IT industry,
led by flagships Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Success was seen at home in
following years with the development of DMB and WiBro technology and abroad with Korean
IT products and services capturing market share in key sectors such as semiconductors.
In addition to its advanced IT infrastructure, the government is now beginning to invest in the
robotics industry. With the aim of becoming the "World's Number 1 Robotics Nation" by 2025,
there are plans to put one robot in every household by 2020. There are other ambitious plans to
expand or create other sectors of the economy, including the financial, biotechnology, aerospace
and entertainment industries.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EconomyoI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EconomyoI