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Notes -
The average wage is worthless because it's a socialist economy. Their de facto pay is organized outside the market system, via rations and other such methods.
During the 1990s a few hundred thousand died in famine. North Korea is a poor country but not that poor. Life expectancy is slightly above world average.
Is that a product of affluency beyond avoiding starvation, though? North Korea doesn't have the issues with random stateless violence, Civil War, HIV and tropical diseases that I'd imagine define the very low life expectancies of a lot of countries.
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