In 1953 the peninsula was wreckage. Same language, same families, same war. South Korea built companies — Hyundai, Samsung, POSCO — under a constitution, private property, and trade. North Korea built a hereditary dictatorship that calls itself a people’s republic and starves its own.
This is not a theory seminar. South Koreans live in a high-income democracy. North Koreans need permission to own a radio that tunes off the state’s channel. Famine in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands in the North while the South exported cars and chips. The American model in that fight was not to annex Seoul. It was to leave a Korean republic standing so Koreans could do the rest.
When someone tells you the system does not matter, show them the border. Ingenuity is not a racial trait. It is what people do when they may own the fruit of their work, speak, and fire their leaders.