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That’s one reason why reuniting two countries would be an unimaginably wrenching task. Remember, West Germany had to spend about $1.9 trillion to assimilate East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And that was an objectively easier situation (East Germany’s per capita income, for instance, was one-third that of West Germany’s, not a measly 5 percent). Beck estimates that bringing North Korea up to just 80 percent of South Korean standards could cost $2 trillion to $5 trillion over 30 years — to put that in perspective, South Korea’s entire economy comes to about $1 trillion.