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South Korea was a literal military dictatorship until the late 80s under the watchful eye of uncle sam.

They were the less successful US pet project after Japan. There is a reason that a whole lot of their media is about how capitalism sucks and that they are the heaviest drinkers in the world.

here's a good summary of the topic

https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/from-stolen-land-to-riches-us-neo-colonialism-in-south-korea

The Korean War basically isn't taught in public schools in America that I've seen. America was propping up military dictators in the South, it didn't have need to go to war with it because it basically received control of the south from Japan in the aftermath of WWII.

Much of it is due to mismanagement of the economy after the fact. After the Korean war, the government heavily promoted heavy industry at the cost of infrastructure and trying to be self reliant to their own detriment. They used policies to try and feed the people by using as much land as possible to farm. This was a disaster though since they did not follow any sustainability practices. The government would give the land to people who would produce more food and this incentivized poor sustainability.

They invested much more into heavy industry than anything else, for defense reasons. North Korea has one of the largest artillery parks in the world, so much so that if there's a country that could supply the war in Ukraine, North Korea would likely be it. They prioritized this over the civilian comforts which while there was civil unrest, it would be squashed.

There's also a whole lot of corruption too and there's a building that really symbolizes that called the Ryugyong Hotel. It's a really prominent structure in the Pyongyang skyline and it took decades to build. Much of the aid that the Soviet Union and China sent was wasted. They sent quite a bit too since they were competing with each other for influence.

South Korea also had a lot of issues too when it started out. The whole Korean peninsula was destroyed after the Second World War and Korean war. It had issues with corruption as well and was coup prone. The US also gave generous amounts of aid to the South Koreans, almost the whole government budget at times. South Korea didn't adopt the self sufficient approach that the North Koreans did and allowed more freedom of thought (though they still practiced strict censorship) In a way, Korea is very much like the Chinese where they rose to prominence due to manufacturing and foreign capital. They largely avoided the incredibly destructive policies that China went through so they rose a lot earlier (A whole different story, look up the Great Leap Forward)

The whole region in the future is going to have issues as they are all aging (except North Korea unless the data is different than reality) That leads to older people who are no longer productive. South Korea is also really dominated by corporations, where Samsung alone controls a ridiculous amount of GDP. North Korea though is a Hermit kingdom like the Hermit kingdom of years past and very few people make it out.