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Chronic food shortages, continuing fallout from the 1990s famine, and economic turmoil don’t help the birth rate. Communism is so fucking dumb. Imagine the power of a 1950s Korea that had been united.
Mr. Black Boi double-posted this 3 days ago, 10 minutes later, 16 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,433,818
Now the reason why countries like China and South Korea are so much wealthier today than a country like say Nigeria is related to the fact that South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and Nigeria has one of the highest. There’s something called a dependency ratio which is the ratio of how many people don’t work (either very old or very young) to people who do work. There’s an ideal dependency ratio where the working population is neither overburdened by raising children or overburdened by caring for the elderly, and when Asian countries crossed that threshold as their birth rate slowed, they experienced rapid economic growth. The only issue is their birth rates actually slowed too fast and now they’re going to suffer the opposite problem which is too many old people instead of too many children, which will ironically have a similar negative effect on the economies of Asia. This has already been seen with Japan for example which has had decades of economic stagnation.
Africa is projected to experience population growth for the rest of this century even though their birth rate is also declining (it’s just much higher to begin with). So it’s not impossible that something similar could happen with African economies in the 22nd century.
But overall, the success of South Korea I think has more to do with the fact that after the Korean War, South Koreans advocated for democracy, not necessarily with the state of South Korea in 1950 as greatly superior.
Park Chung Hee’s Miracle on the Han was a product of efficient bureaucracy and hiring Japanese technical experts. The entire focus was on human capital. SK has no notable natural resources and suffered a murderous colonial regime of Japan for more than 50 years.
Mr. Black Boi joined in and replied with this 3 days ago, 1 hour later, 20 hours after the original post[^][v]#1,433,840
@previous (F)
I feel like geography is probably also a factor. South Korea is in a great location for trade, probably not a great location militarily. Basically all their neighbors are a threat to them in some way except for Japan ironically.