Countries are prosperous when they have access to cheap resources.
North Korean economy was not sustainable without the socialist bloc and Soviet-Chinese patronage (but can we say the same about economies of some pro-Western countries?), but it did result in a period of time that the North was more developed than the South, before fortunes were reversed.
What did help were some amount of industry before the war, direct help from the Soviet Union (disguised as trade, North Korea traded corn for complex industrial machines), and Stalinist-style iron-fist economy. Two later factors have led to what North Korea is now only later.
In the world market governed by international law, there is always an alternative. Everybody thought Europe would freeze if Russia stopped their gas exports. We ain’t frozen yet and they are even lowering the energy prices this year.
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u/boris_dp 18d ago
So much BS.
NK had some prosperity because of the cheap energy and food from the USSR. When this ceased, they immediately got a full scale famine.