On: South Korea to raise $500B for unification

[lgierth]

Most of the industrial production means was sold to western capital in the early 90s by the Treuhandanstalt (trust agency), and the companies were closed.

Edit: this was of course one of the biggest waves of privatization Germany has seen. The English Wikipedia has a bit more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treuhand

[justincormack → lgierth]

They were sold. That means they were not closed, you do not buy something and then shut it down. Some was shut down later, or repurposed.

[blahedo → justincormack]

> You do not buy something and then shut it down.

An ironic comment on Hacker News, of all places.

[kamaal → blahedo]

Buying something to shut it down, might work for internet business which large Internet MegaCorps wish to shut down if they are working on something similar in house.

But a country wide railway line, or a underground cable network and things like that don't just get shut down to suppress competition.

[lgierth → justincormack]

With industrial production means, I meant machines. The machines were sold, and the companies/factories shut down. Not much to produce without machines :)