This is the second part of two posts examining how North Korea
fell behind South Korea. The previous part can be found here. As
the previous post found, for several decades North Korea kept up
with South Korea. Then, during the mid-1970s, the country
started falling behind. Ever since then the gap between the two
countries has widened. This post will explore several factors
behind what caused North Korea to fall behind. There seem to be
three main causes: the failed ideology of juche (self-reliance),
the end of Soviet aid, and Kim Jong-Il’s incompetent rule. If
one looks at Gapminder’s graphic, North Korea and South Korea
are neck-and-neck until the mid-1970s: Then North Korea falls
behind: What caused this? Well, in 1972 North Korea adopted the
ideology of juche into the constitution. Juche stands for self-
reliance. There’s a lot of fancy Marxist philosophical
complexity behind the idea, but in its essence it seems to be
basically a fancy form of protectionism. Juche was very harmful
to the North Korean econ