In a recent interview with the Korean Economic Institute scholar Andrei Lankov argued that North Korea is not in a position to follow the path of economic reform witnessed in countries like China due to the onerous presence of South Korea. As he put it, “In China, reforms are possible because there is no South China.” But the notion that China was able to undertake economic reforms in a cultural or geographic vacuum does not seem well-supported by evidence.

What we do know is that when Deng Xiaoping started instituting economic reforms in China in 1978, the various countries with