Interview with Malcolm Rifkind on North Korea, part 2
VM: In your previous answer, you mentioned that South Korea, with a population of 51 million, is twice as large as North Korea, and its wealth and GDP of nearly 3 trillion US dollars, are vastly greater than North Korean GPD of 40 billion USD, and that the North Koreans flee to South Korea.
I can add that that the defence budget of South Korea is nearly equal to GDP of North Korea. That is statistic, which is considered accurate, but reality might be different. For example, statistic does not take into consideration costs of labor or level of taxation, “administration” costs, or cost of production of energy resources or products, or tanks, guns and missiles in these countries… In 2017, average salary of American has buying potential equal to the average salary of American in 1958… With all todays thousands of dollars!
(далее…)
