If North and South Korea unite, Japan will be faced with a huge new competitor, much more powerful a competitor than South Korea is right now. There will be a country of seventy-five to eighty million people right on the Chinese border, with lots of cheap, disciplined labor and natural resources in the north and lots of capital, expertise, and management capabilities in the south. Such a country would run circles around Japan. The cost of doing business in Japan is high and getting higher. Among other things, the Japanese do not have a lot of cheap labor anymore.
Jim Rogers is a smart investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1973. By 1983 the fund gained more than 4000 percent.