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I think South Koreans don't want the united Korea either (not on the words but in practice). It will pose a huge burden of organizing and assimilating a huge an

I think South Koreans don't want the united Korea either (not on the words but in practice). It will pose a huge burden of organizing and assimilating a huge and a very strange country. Regular North Koreans will be eager to join but then they won't be so happy in fifteen years seeing how their life quality won't nearly match the "historical south" and only jobs available to most of them will be of low prestige and pay.

gosukiwi 14y ago
South Koreans just want to keep playing Starcraft and League of Legends.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  I can't blame them for that. I'm sitting on the couch in a warm room with new year tree and 47" TV right now and I certainly won't want to go outside in the snow and cold to fix the agriculture or restore the order of some remote and unhospitable land. Also won't want to have my lifestyle degrade because my country suddently have 20 million unproductive mouths to feed.
silencio 14y ago
South Korea has already sunk billions of dollars into trying to help the people of the DPRK without even considering unification, and is promising even more than that in exchange for certain concessions from the government. There are still many families that have yet to be reunited with each other across the border, including parts of my extended family. The Korean War hasn't ended so long ago that there aren't still plenty of people that remember what it was like before this split, or even back to WW2 and earlier. Nobody is saying unification will be easy for anyone, but they're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers just because the burden is a lot to shoulder. Not to mention it's not South Korea blocking the development of North Korean workers at the moment.. there have been attempts to work together (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region) but between the batshit crazy government up north and everyone else scared shitless of what they can do it's not possible to manufacture and import/export a lot of technology instead of just mass-manufacturing clothing with cheap labor. Pretty frustrating.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Part of what makes the "wait it out" solution particularly troublesome is that as generations pass, the "hey're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers" thing will gradually become less and less true. Right now there are families in which people who were once together are now divided, but those generations are rapidly aging. How many generations can these two groups of people be relatively isolated before those bonds start to falter?

gosukiwi 14y ago

South Koreans just want to keep playing Starcraft and League of Legends.

guard-of-terra 14y ago
I can't blame them for that. I'm sitting on the couch in a warm room with new year tree and 47" TV right now and I certainly won't want to go outside in the snow and cold to fix the agriculture or restore the order of some remote and unhospitable land. Also won't want to have my lifestyle degrade because my country suddently have 20 million unproductive mouths to feed.

silencio 14y ago

South Korea has already sunk billions of dollars into trying to help the people of the DPRK without even considering unification, and is promising even more than that in exchange for certain concessions from the government. There are still many families that have yet to be reunited with each other across the border, including parts of my extended family. The Korean War hasn't ended so long ago that there aren't still plenty of people that remember what it was like before this split, or even back to WW2 and earlier. Nobody is saying unification will be easy for anyone, but they're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers just because the burden is a lot to shoulder. Not to mention it's not South Korea blocking the development of North Korean workers at the moment.. there have been attempts to work together (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region) but between the batshit crazy government up north and everyone else scared shitless of what they can do it's not possible to manufacture and import/export a lot of technology instead of just mass-manufacturing clothing with cheap labor. Pretty frustrating.

jlgreco 14y ago
Part of what makes the "wait it out" solution particularly troublesome is that as generations pass, the "hey're family members. They were friends. They were neighbors. They are not strangers" thing will gradually become less and less true. Right now there are families in which people who were once together are now divided, but those generations are rapidly aging. How many generations can these two groups of people be relatively isolated before those bonds start to falter?