Tag: South Korea

North Korea’s Economic Failure in a Second Picture

North Korea isn’t just dark. If you look at the nation’s per capita income, it’s clear that the economic situation has gotten darker.

Over at the Washington Post Wonkblog, Brad Plumer crunches the data on per capita income in South and North Korea since the 1970s. Stunning divergence:

Note that Kim Jong Il took power in 1994.

P.S. Data about North Korea’s economy are, of course, spotty and incomplete. That’s why the line for North Korea is so flat; in many years, reported GDP per capita doesn’t change. So take the specifics with a grain of salt. But the overall picture remains the same.

North Korea’s Economic Failure in One Picture

North Korea is notoriously secretive. But it can’t hide from satellites. Here are nighttime images showing the amount of light coming from the Korean peninsula.

As Donald Rumsfeld once said, “North Korea is dark”:

This image comes from “Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space” by J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil, who demonstrate how light can be used as a proxy for measuring economic growth in places with poor economic data.

For other versions of this image, just google north south korea at night.