Weekend edition—North Korea’s reformer?, build a boyfriend, MIT’s innovations

[Quartz Daily Brief]( Good morning, Quartz readers! Prior to yesterday’s landmark Korea summit, Kim Jong-un announced that North Korea would stop launching missiles and halt its reactor tests, instead shifting its focus to economic growth. Amid all the talk of denuclearization, that line went broadly unnoticed. If Kim is serious about building North Korea’s economy, Deng Xiaoping would be the most telling example. He followed Mao Zedong as China’s supreme leader and ushered a series of market-oriented reforms starting in 1978, lifting his country out of industrial backwardness and onto the global stage. Truly following the Chinese model would be quite visionary for someone as young as Kim, who is between 34 and 36, depending on who you believe. He rules an isolated state that he inherited from his grandfather. In all likelihood, with [his yachts and private islands]( Kim has not experienced any personal hardship due to the decisions of his family. Deng, by contrast, was 74 years old when he assumed power. It came after a lifetime of turmoil that included having his eldest son thrown out of the window of a four-story building at the height of the Cultural Revolution, leaving him paralyzed. Deng was very familiar with the suffering his party’s policies inflicted on his people. If Kim was to attempt to follow in Deng’s footsteps, he would have to embark on a system of massive economic change like the so-called Four Modernizations, a huge undertaking to transform China’s agriculture, science, and technology sectors to put the country on par with the West. Deng gave power to individuals, not knowing whether it would work, to “[cross the river by feeling the stones]( North Korea is still a command economy, and a war economy at that. It has an annual [GDP of around $1,700 per person]( roughly a tenth of China’s. Any attempts to integrate it into the world’s economy would be even more risky than what China tried. Following Deng’s reforms would also involve doing what North Korea’s leadership has never done: admit it can be wrong. Almost immediately on taking power in 1977, Deng allowed the criticism of the Cultural Revolution and the disastrous Great Leap Forward, famously saying that Mao was “[70% right and 30% wrong]( North Korea has an analogous disasterâ€”ì¡°ì„ ê¸°ê·¼, or the Arduous March, a state-induced famine in the 1990s that killed [up to 10% of the population]( (paywall). But it’s impossible to imagine Kim repeating that phrase, or ever allowing anyone to blame his father for that nightmare in public. Then again, it was impossible only a few months ago to imagine Kim eating cold noodles with South Korea’s leader, all [warm smiles and handshakes]( or to imagine him sitting down with a US president at a meeting of equals.—Kabir Chibber (with contributions from Zheping Huang) Five things on Quartz we especially liked Chump change. Billions of dollars in unclaimed money sits in bank accounts, checks, or unused gift cards in the US—and can be easily found with a few minutes on the internet. Helen and Dave Edwards [searched for unclaimed funds]( owed several of the rich and famous (and a few of their own friends) and discovered thousands for Steven Spielberg, Donald Trump, Bono, and others. Everything you need to know about “emotional labor.” The term has evolved into a catch-all referring to all the work women do that goes unrecognized and unpaid. Starting at the origins of the idea, Khe Hy looks at why it caught on as a [way to describe a pervasive phenomenon]( women experience at work and at home, and where his own blind spots have been. How to build yourself a robot boyfriend. Weary of the mediocrity of modern dating, roboticist Fei Liu [is creating herself the love she deserves](. Gabriel2052 can caresses Liu, support her, and flirt with her using the message logs of Liu’s previous boyfriends. As much a meditation on the changing nature of intimacy as it is a technological endeavor, this article explores our relationships with machines—and ourselves. The legacy of Russia’s greatest Ponzi scheme. Sergei Mavrodi died last month, but his company, MMM, has survived for decades, and spread around the world even after it was exposed as a fraud. Sara Hess and Eugene Soltes look at how the MMM name and branding [have recently been embraced by the crypto world]( supposedly fulfilling Macrodi’s “last wish of beating Bitcoin” with his own crypto token. Plus ça change… Richard Nixon’s historic visit to a freshly rogue, nuclear-armed China in 1972 was once as inconceivable as the imminent summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Zheping Huang draws some [smart parallels between then and now]( including heated rhetoric about nuclear war from a dictator (in that case, Mao Zedong), as well as some odd sports diplomacy. Message from our Partner Join Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Yo-Yo Ma, and Eric Schmidt to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. [Become a member]( of MIT Solve to hear from them and work with a community of entrepreneurs and innovators in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 16-18. Five things elsewhere that made us smarter The impossible patience of the refugee. “[The Waiting Game]( is an interactive storytelling experience, built by ProPublica and WNYC, that puts you in the shoes of five asylum-seeking refugees. As you attempt to flee danger at home for a new life abroad, you must decide daily to give up or keep going. Except “going” is a misnomer; little actually changes, other than your building anxiety and lack of new information. What one columnist learned from his Brexit critics. “I’ve had hundreds of emails, thousands of comments and several face-to-face dressing-downs from pro-Brexit readers,” Simon Kuper writes [in the Financial Times]( (paywall). Kuper responds in detail to some of his critics’ most common refrains, from “You lost. Get over it” to “You were a football writer, so what do you know?” A pitstop at the future. For more than three decades, MIT’s Media Lab has been creating audacious solutions to the world’s problems: from growing food in space to “movie map,” a 1979 precursor to Google street view. [60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley visited the Lab]( where 400 projects are currently underway, to understand what’s being done today that will drive the innovations of tomorrow. Fanning violence with Facebook. The social network’s financial future rests in large part on the developing world, where its expansion is rapid. But misinformation on Facebook has also led to or exacerbated riots, lynchings, and violence all over the globe. In the New York Times, Amanda Taub and Max Fisher [look at the real dangers]( (paywall) caused by fake news and hate speech online, particularly in countries with weak institutions. Catching up with a kingmaker. Movies touch everyone’s lives, and Nina Gold plays an often invisible role in shaping who appears in them. The casting director has worked on everything from Game of Thrones to The Crown, and is one of the influential people in the careers of those actors she handpicks for mega-stardom. In The Guardian, [Sophie Elmhirst looks at]( one woman has shaped so many of our favorite characters. Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, robot boyfriends, and space food to hi@qz.com. You can follow us [on Twitter here]( for updates throughout the day, or download [our apps for iPhone]( and [Android](. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Kira Bindrim and Kabir Chibber. Enjoying the Daily Brief? Forward it to a friend! They can [click here to sign up.]( If you click a link to an e-commerce site and make a purchase, we may receive a small cut of the revenue, which helps support our ambitious journalism. 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