Rebuilding the north may start with small pilot projects, but if successful the costs can only escalate. But this may be wishful thinking, or it may rebound. Talk of North Korea joining the likes of the World Bank ignores how much it would have to disclose and reform to be eligible. That leaves private capital. Foreign companies are unlikely to rush to Pyongyang, except in partnership with Korean firms.
Bonds are another likely option.
But thorny issues will arise as to how far southern aid means opening, or opening entails reform. Both efficaciousness and reciprocity are involved. Merely propping up a failed but belligerent state makes no sense on either count. Meanwhile, Kim Dae-jung must weigh his democratic instincts against the risk of derailing what will be a supremely delicate and inevitably prolonged transition, whose later stages will fall to his successors as president. But the economic base, to use the old Marxist phrase, is already being built.