By Lee Hyo-sik
Staff Reporter

The economic gap between South and North Korea has been widening over the past three decades, with the South exporting 383 times more than the North last year, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Monday.

South Korea's trade and other international transactions totaled $857.3 billion in 2008, 225.6 times North Korea's $3.8 billion. Asia's fourth-largest economy shipped cars, mobile phones, semiconductors and other products overseas worth $422 billion, 383.3 times more than the communist country's $1.1 billion. Seoul's imports reached $435.3 billion, 161 times more than Pyongyang's $2.7 billion.

The Stalinist state exports mostly minerals and fisheries goods to China and a few other countries, while importing grains, consumer goods and oil and other energy resources.

The South's gross national income (GNI) amounted to $934.7 billion in 2008, 37.7 times more than the North's $24.8 billion, while the South's per-capita GNI ($19,231) was 18.1 times more than the North's ($1,065).

``Until the early 1980s, the North Korean economy was as big as South Korea's. But the disparity has increased rapidly over the past three decades as the capitalistic South expanded at an explosive pace by exporting various industrial goods to overseas markets. But the communist North has deteriorated because of its closed economic system. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s dealt a severe blow to the North,'' a ministry official said.

Furthermore, its missile and nuclear development programs have isolated it from the rest of the world, making it more difficult for the communist state to import oil and other necessary resources and capital goods for economic development, the official said.

``Additionally, droughts and other unfavorable weather conditions have cut its agricultural production. With its inadequate roads, power generation and other economic and social infrastructures, its wealth gap with the South will further deepen down the road,'' he projected.

South Korea produced 4.09 million automobiles in 2007, while the North made only 5,000 cars. The picture was pretty much the same in other industrial sectors ― even in the agricultural and fisheries industries. The South produced 4.4 million tons of rice compared to 1.5 million tons in the North.

But the communist state produced more iron ore and other minerals than their southern counterpart. North Korea extracted 5.13 million tons of iron ore and 24.1 million tons of coal in 2007, larger than South Korea's 291,000 tons of iron ore and 2.88 million tons of coal.

leehs@koreatimes.co.kr