The result is a land of stark contrasts. Education is good enough for Samsung to hire northern computer programmers, yet health care has collapsed and a generation of children is stunted. Markets have de facto replaced the old public distribution system in city and country alike, yet are tolerated not encouraged. In what is left of industry, the old system limps on. Some plants have reopened, but decades of under-investment add low productivity to the endless bottlenecks of a bankrupt planned economy.
Power shortages are severe.
Put another way, South Korea's growth each year adds the equivalent of three North Koreas. Sectorally it is the same story. In 1998 South Korea imported 221 times as much oil as North Korea, produced 125 times as many vehicles and 40 times as much ship tonnage, and generated 12.7 times more electricity. Qualitatively, again, South Korea is a modern consumer society, with one of the world's top penetration rates of mobile phones and the highest rate of on-line stock trading anywhere. North Korea as yet has no stock exchange, e-mail or handphones for general use.