It is 2060, decades after South and North Korea made history by agreeing to unify. The process has been long and difficult, but the Korean Peninsula is now home to the world’s 10th-largest economy, with a gross domestic product of $5.5 trillion -- eclipsing South Korea's $1.4 trillion in 2013. The KTX bullet train, which served only the residents of South Korea when it was built in 2004, now criss-crosses Eurasia, linking Seoul with Paris.
Unifying two vastly different nations -- one a technology and manufacturing powerhouse, the other an isolated dictatorship with a history of famine -- has been expensive, costing trillions of dollars. But it is starting to pay off: The economic benefits of integrating the two countries now outweigh those costs by three times.
