>>1045285
I'm not even going to act like I know for a fact, but I'm pretty sure both were poor as shit and that's why it's so heavily correlated initially

>>1045307
Oh yeah they were both poor as shit, but it just seems strange that they're fairly on the same footing until one year where the South steams ahead and the North flatlines.

Probably something to do with US investment being more economically productive than Soviet investment? I dunno.

Looks like it correlates with 1973, could be a cause related to the 1973 oil crisis?

>>1045285
South Korea initially tried import substitution policies, making their own things to build up industry and preventing foreign competition. This was inefficient, so they then turned to export orientated policies which worked. The government provide cheap loans to companies and the country also had significant aid/foreign investment which was used well on industries on which South Korea had a competitive advantage, labour intensive manufacturing ones. These companies were forced to compete with the rest of the world, increasing efficiency. Later on they turned to high tech industries which further boosted growth. The north however is still stuck in the "we need autarky" mode.

>>1045320
Well then I believe it's safe to assume that trade ties were opened up between the west and South Korea, while North Korea maintained isolation

Mao died, there were political changes in China and Kim Il Sung closed the country off to prevent the same happening in North Korea.

>>1045285
Read "economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth" by mises, it sparked the so called socialist calculation debate in economics - if you want to go into the theoretical core of why communism failed spectatularly economically.

Communism worked fine in the first decate or so when you rebuild after a war, but it doesn't work for a peace-time economy.

>>1045285
Famine, communism (or whatever the fuck Juche is) etc.

>>1045307
Nope. Norks had a booming economy after the Korean War. Here's the thing about central planning policies: they work really well when your economy is very simple and not diversified.

When your economy is dealing with basic problems of scale like trying to produce more rice when capacity is low, someone saying 'let's do land reclamation' works perfectly fine.

>>1045285
There was a number of factors that caused shit to retarded in the 70s, but it all boils down to the beginning of the military first policy.

The Sino-Soviet split meant that North Korea was better able to milk it's patrons to the north, but it was in a much more precarious position. The invasion of the South was only possible with the support of both the Chinese AND the Soviets. Getting the two to cooperate ever again seemed unlikely.

At the same time the Park regime looked much more threatening. The subversion policy of the 'second Korean War' in the 60s was failed. The North Koreans were not planning for another 60 years of economic competition and division. It was unthinkable to them. They didn't think of themselves as North Koreans yet, they thought of themselves as Koreans.

In the 70s they switched over to the military first policy to ensure that they would be able to conduct a war with the South and their allies independently without significant Chinese support. Nixon at the time was talking about withdrawing U.S. troops. But the opportunity never opened up, and it was a waste of money.

>>1046889
There was no famine in the 1970s.

Both were poor as fuck.
NK got aid from China and the USSR. It grew as much as it was possible under a central planning and was seriously hurt by Russia's decline.
SK got help from the US. It industrialised with an eventual economic liberalisation in mind, focusing on exports and developing human capital.