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The Economist has been busy working out how the two Koreas would benefit from becoming
one. The British economic weekly notes how the
costs of reunion would be staggering,... by conservative estimates about one trillion
U.S. dollars, or three-quarters of South Korea's annual GDP.
It points out that while that is extremely expensive,... the South would merge with a
population in the North that is younger and has almost twice as many babies.
That would be a demographic boon, as South Korea's working-age population begins to shrink
from next year. The Economist report says South Korea would
also reap a windfall in reserves of rare earth minerals, which are used in electronics.
On the negative side,... the report says South Korea's social-security system would need
to provide for 25 million North Koreans, many of them brutalized and malnourished, and including
tens of thousands of people in the North's political prison camps.