Chinese Plans for Absorbing North Korea
6th December 2015
China and South Korea are both quite uneasy about the prospect of the North Korean government collapsing. This is by both as a question of when not if as the economy and public support for the hereditary dictatorship in North Korea continues to decline. Unless the North Korean leadership makes some fundamental, and long opposed, changes the government control of the country will collapse. Both China and South Korea say they should take over but neither is enthusiastic about actually doing so. According to opinion surveys more South Koreans are agreeing with letting China take over up there. That’s because since the 1990s South Korean reunification planners have been studying what happened in Germany after the communist East Germany was absorbed by the democratic West Germany in the 1990s. That cost the West German taxpayers over two trillion dollars. Estimates of what it will cost South Koreans to absorb North Korea are now over five trillion dollars. Then there was the fact that Germany had a GDP four times that of South Korea, meaning that the average South Korean will have to pay ten times what the average West German paid to rebuild their lesser half. This could cost South Koreans up to ten percent of their GDP for a decade or more. Many South Koreans fear that rebuilding the north could wreck the South Korean economy. No one knows, and everyone is scared. But someone will have to pay, and the most likely candidate is the South Korean taxpayer. Unless, of course, China is allowed to take over. This is something China is not only willing to do but is kind of insisting on.