Jim Rogers, who co-founded legendary hedge fund Quantum with George Soros, once said in 2016: “North Korea today is where China was in 1981. Deng Xiaoping started opening up in ‘78. Most of us, including me, either weren’t aware of it or if we were aware of it. We ignored  it, didn’t pay any attention. North Korea is doing that now.” North Korea’s Korea Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Committee (KFIECC - a mouthful!) published a new guide in 2016 on the business and investment environment in the country. 

The room we conduct workshops on has also fostered debate. We've seen our participants really go at it over marketing and growth strategies, debating to a point where it got a little uncomfortable for the rest of us. We've also seen real cooperation and solidarity as participants try to figure out challenges our volunteer workshop leaders have assigned them. The room is large, easily accommodating one hundred people or more, and let's us move people around to create small, active groups. 

There are questions on how much Moon can engage, or how soon, given the potential US political backlash. But anyway, here are our colleague Andray's personal views on how a new economic engagement policy under South Korea should look like: "Supporting smaller-scale investments in North Korea by South Korean companies offers a more promising path to achieving greater North-South economic cooperation....Even at the KIC’s peak era, the limitations on its success and spillover effects into the North Korean economy were manifold..."