Economic integration in the Korean peninsula

Noland argues that "North Korea faces a fundamentally supportive international environment. South Korea, Japan, China, even the US want to see a less belligerent North Korea survive until a consensual process of reconciliation and unification can take place on the Korean peninsula. ... [t]he most likely outcome is a continued muddling through in which the regime makes series of ad hoc adjustments in economic policy while supported by external powers ... to the risks of instability or collapse. The outcome could well be ... "apparatchik capitalism" in which the political elite would use their control over state power to channel the lion's share of rents generated by a partially marketised and non-transparent economy to themselves."