Human Rights Watch. Donate Now. Take Action. Join Us. Give Now. Explore Asia. Asia October 8, Dispatches. Kanae Doi Japan Director. Asia September 2, Dispatches. Refugees and Migrants July 22, Dispatches. Videos Watch more. Reports More reports. Images from North Korea's capital Pyongyang often show stretches of wide, pristine motorway unoccupied by traffic, but outside the city it's another story.
It's also estimated that only about 11 out of every 1, North Koreans owns a car, which means a long queue at the bus stop for most people who need to travel.
North Korea relies on coal exports to keep its economy above water - but it's hard to measure their true value as the data comes from countries receiving the coal. Much of North Korea's coal is exported to China, which banned imports in February However some analysts question the nature of the sanction. I do believe that China has disrupted coal imports, but not completely," says Kent Boydston, research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Until North and South Korea were pretty evenly matched in terms of wealth. Since then, South Korea has rocketed ahead to become one of the world's leading industrial producers, with companies like Samsung and Hyundai becoming global household names.
North Korea stagnated in the s as the country stuck rigidly to its state-run system. While North Korea is the 52nd largest country by population, it is considered to have the world's fourth largest army. Read more about North Korea's military strength. A series of famines in the late s caused a sharp drop in life expectancy in North Korea, but even without that factor, the North lags nearly 12 years behind. Food shortages persist and are one of many reasons why South Koreans generally live longer.
In South Korea's birth rate hit a record low as the country continued a decade-long struggle to boost the country's birth rate. Produced by Alex Murray and Tom Housden. This was the first time such a summit meeting had ever taken place, and the event once again raised expectations of reconciliation and eventual reunion between the two halves of the divided peninsula.
However, there is still very little contact between the governments or the people of North and South Korea, and barring a dramatic turn of events, the hope for reunification appears to be a long way off. In addition to the 46 million people in South Korea and 23 million in the North, some 6 to 7 million people of Korean descent, or approximately 10 percent of the population of the two Koreas combined, live outside the Korean peninsula.
The largest communities of overseas Koreans are in China two million , the United States over one million , Japan , , and the former Soviet Union , , mostly in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Korean diaspora is distinctive both for its relative size and the fact that it is almost entirely a twentieth-century phenomenon, with the exception of Koreans in China and Russia, who began to immigrate there in large numbers in the s.
There were no Koreans in U. Koreans were first brought to Hawaii in as workers in the sugarcane fields. Later, Koreans settled increasingly on the U. Koreans in the U. By the s, Koreans were among the most rapidly growing groups of immigrants to the United States.
Immigration from Korea leveled off after and began to decline in the early s, but increased slightly again after the Asian financial crisis hit South Korea in The main concentrations of Koreans in the U. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, South Korea is among the major industrialized nations of the world and is widely recognized as a success in economic development and political democratization.
South Korea has evolved remarkably from the poor, backward country that emerged from the shadows of Japanese colonial rule in It is also a country with a strong sense of national identity and great pride in its culture, traditions, and accomplishments. At the same time, Korea remains divided into North and South, with nearly two million men under arms on the peninsula and a high state of military tension.
As it has for more than a century, Korea occupies a strategic place on the world map, and any conflict on the peninsula would have the potential to draw in neighboring countries, if not farther.
Unsupported Browser Detected. Korean History and Political Geography. The Two Koreas Since , North and South Korea have evolved from a common cultural and historical base into two very different societies with radically dissimilar political and economic systems.
The Korean Diaspora In addition to the 46 million people in South Korea and 23 million in the North, some 6 to 7 million people of Korean descent, or approximately 10 percent of the population of the two Koreas combined, live outside the Korean peninsula.
Author: Charles K. Additional Background Reading. Japan's Sins of Omission. International dispute over history textbooks in East Asia. The turbulent decades between independence to present time. How issues of race and power have shaped both popular attitudes and foreign policy for years. A chronology of nuclear weapon technology proliferation.
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