Worlds apart after seven decades of separation

WHILE hopes for an easing of tensions on the Korean peninsula have jumped after conciliatory gestures from US President Donald Trump, the North’s Kim Jong-un and the South’s Moon Jae-in, the notion of unifying the Asian nation looks as distant as ever.

Since being divided at the end of World War II and ravaged by conflict in the 1950s, North and South Korea have taken radically different political and economic paths. The South is now a robust democracy that plays a key role in the world economy, while the North is a globally isolated dictatorship that presents an outsize military threat.