December 19, 2011 2:58PM # The Brutal Impact of North Korean Statism By [Daniel J. Mitchell](https://www.cato.org/people/daniel-mitchell) --- SHARE One hopes that the dictator of North Korea suffered greatly before he died. After all, his totalitarian and communist (pardon the redundancy) policies have cause untold death and misery. But let’s try to learn an economics lesson. In a previous post, I [compared long-term growth in Hong Kong and Argentina](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/greetings-from-argentina-an-obamaesque-land-of-crony-capitalism-and-a-warning-to-america/) to show the difference between capitalism and cronyism. But for a much more dramatic comparison, look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea. ![Media Name: 201112_blog_mitchell191.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/201112_blog_mitchell191.jpg?itok=QV7AW2Gw) Hmmm… I wonder if we can conclude that markets are better than statism? And if you like these types of comparisons, here’s a post showing how [Singapore has caught up with the United States](https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/report-from-world-economic-forum-gives-u-s-poor-grades-for-wasteful-spending-and-burdensome-regulation/). And here’s another comparing [what’s happened in the past 30 years in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela](http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/in-one-chart-everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-relationship-between-good-policy-and-economic-prosperity/). ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).