Since I don't understand what the Global South is, please explain to me:

1. Why North Korea is in it, but not South Korea.

2. Why Russia, the most northerly big country on earth, is in it?

3. Why nearly equatorial Taiwan and equatorial Singapore aren't in it?

4. Why Australia and New Zealand aren't in it?

If western exploitation explains relative poverty and prosperity:

1. Why is Botswana far wealthier than Zimbabwe? Same colonial history, same colonizer and totally different outcomes. Answer: Zimbabwe had Hitler admirer Robert Mugabe running the Zimbabwe kleptocracy for more than 30 years.

2. Why is Costa Rica a prosperous outlier in Central America vs Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala? Same colonial history, gained independence at the same time, same colonizer. Answer: Costa Rica had Josep Figueres, a Catalan immigrant president who abolished the army and paved the way for Central America's only democratic welfare state.

3. Why is indebted impoverished Argentina running a 115% inflation rate vs Chile's relative prosperity and low debt/GDP ratio? Same question for Venezuela vs Colombia. Answer: institutions, governance and policy choices. Both were colonized by Spain, speak the same language, have similar cultures, religious demography. Western imperialism has nothing to do with these disparate outcomes.

4. Why is Estonia 40% wealthier than Latvia? Both started in the same place in 1991 when the USSR collapsed. Answer: Estonia had nearby Finnish governance to copy and created the most innovative digitized governance system on earth while Latvia languished in post-Soviet kleptocracy dominated by oligarchs. It was much easier to get Latvia out of the Soviet Union than to get the Soviet Union out of the Latvians. I know; I live here and see how different Estonia is.

5. Why are the conquered and occupied Catalunya and Basque regions in Spain so much wealthier than Spain's Galicia, Andalusia, Extremadura, Murcia, Castilla, La Mancha regions? In this case of the conquered getting rich while the conqueror stays poor western exploitation clearly had no role.

6. Why is Russia poor and its Finnish neighbor rich? Don't blame western exploitation since Finland was under Tsarist rule from 1809-1917. Answer: governance and institutions, which are political choices.

7. In 1961 South Korea and India had the same GDP per capita: $300. South Korea is no longer an emerging market and its GDP per capita is 8x India's. In addition, South Korea was flattened by bombings in WWII and the Korean War, while India was untouched by war. Why the different outcomes? Not colonization. Japanese imperial rule was far more brutal and exploitive than British rule in India. Answer: governance and policy choices since independence.

7. Unchangeable geography: all the world's poorest countries are landlocked (Afghanistan, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nepal, the Central Asian -Stans, Mongolia). Botswana is an exception due to the landlocked = poor due to diamonds and good governance. Western exploitation had nothing to do with this geography.

8. Why are Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Switzerland exceptions to the landlocked = poor rule? Answer: governance and institutions.

Why is coastal Bulgaria poorer than the landlocked Czech Republic and Slovakia? Answer: not quite post-Soviet mafia with a flag corruption that makes Palermo look like Helsinki.

If every economic outcome is defined as the nail of western exploitation, then your only analytical tool becomes an ahistorical hammer that fails to answer why all these different outcomes actually happened.