Italy and Japan divided during Cold War era

Agreed, though Juche appears to have really derailed North Korea despite it having some headstart over the South before the division. I understand the was really little industrial development in either part of Korea before 1950; what little was there tended to be in the North, so American investment really made a lot of difference in that case.
Oh God, the Kims. It's like having a whole family of Maos without the (little) sanity left. :perservingface:

Plus, it's not talked about much, but North Korea had to start over from scratch after the Korean War. The American bombing was relentless; other than the heavily defended 'Mig Alley' , American bomber pilots were complaining they were running out of targets. There were barely any buildings that had two bricks on top of each other. South Korea may have been ravaged, but the North got flat-out wrecked. It's part of why the DPRK still holds a grudge against the Americans. They had a lot of rebuilding to do, and the South got a bigger check courtesy of Uncle Sam. And then the Kims slowly drove the country insane.
 
Oh God, the Kims. It's like having a whole family of Maos without the (little) sanity left. :perservingface:

Plus, it's not talked about much, but North Korea had to start over from scratch after the Korean War. The American bombing was relentless; other than the heavily defended 'Mig Alley' , American bomber pilots were complaining they were running out of targets. There were barely any buildings that had two bricks on top of each other. South Korea may have been ravaged, but the North got flat-out wrecked. It's part of why the DPRK still holds a grudge against the Americans. They had a lot of rebuilding to do, and the South got a bigger check courtesy of Uncle Sam. And then the Kims slowly drove the country insane.
I was not sure of the impact of the war, that's why I did not touch the topic, but this explains a lot.
 
Same thing with East/West Germany and North/South Korea; the "Capitalist"-controlled parts had the heavier population and most of the infrastructure and resources. West Germany had almost everything compared to East Germany, whose industry and agriculture were much smaller, and while North Korea has more farmland and is the bigger country, it has just about half the population of South Korea and is more reliant on primary industries. More research is necessary to clarify, but those facts certainly have an impact.
The south had a larger population, but that just meant it was rather over populated. The vast majority of Japanese colonial investment had been into resource extraction and processing in the North (which had the majority of the peninsula's mineral wealth). The south remained agrarian and poor well into the 1960s.

Whether North Italy ends up with a psychopathic regime will be the biggest determining factor in how well it does. Because its head start won't matter for long if it's its suffering an East Germany tier case of brain drain and capital flight.
 
Japan is easy considering it was, well, openly considered for a time before the United States nixed the idea of a four-power occupation there. The British and the Chinese were ambivalent about taking additional occupation duties (Chiang had already rejected an offer to occupy the Ryukus at this point), so I'm not totally sure how it would turn out. I am not familiar with the economic or demographic make-up of what would have comprised the Soviet zone at that time.

If Italy had not surrendered when it had, through that alone I can see reason for occupation zones being established, though I can't possibly see the Soviets taking any significant part in it. Were it to be divided it would have primarily been between France, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the Soviets potentially having an occupation zone in Rome so that they are represented. A true Soviet zone, at its most logical points such as in Veneto, would have run counter to what was then the British occupation zones in Austria and Italy. Potentially maybe a small Yugoslavian occupation zone is granted in what would be Istria and into parts of Veneto, but not much.
 
If the Monarchists won the Italian referendum, I could see the Socialists starting a civil war that results in a red north Italy or a red peninsular Italy.

For Japan, a Soviet capture of Hokkaido isn't inconceivable.
 
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