Please. It seems it’s only the older generation — to include the famed 386’ers — who are fixated on reunification and the plight of the North Koreans. I would venture to say that the younger generation — 30 and below — couldn’t care less about what goes on in North Korea.
Furthermore, it’s this guilt you describe that resulted in the completely ineffectual sunshine policies of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyon. If South Korea is so torn and guilt-wracked by its prosperity when contemplating the North, why doesn’t it just surrender? Conversely, if the South wishes to save the people of the North, why don’t they begin all-out propaganda and active measures campaigns designed to result in the overthrow of the current regime up there?
No one in the South, young or old, wants to get into the discussion about what will realistically happen should the North collapse: China will immediately and militarily move in, take over at least down to the DMZ, and effectively absorb the North into the motherland. There is no way in hell China would allow a democratic Korea to sit on its border.
South Korea does not want North Korea to fail for now. The Sunshine Policy is Dead. People in the South do believe unification will come, but it’s just that they have are so convinced that war or collapse will not occur.
Heh, of course, China will not want a unified U.S. occupied Korean Peninsula. Does this mean this will not happen? This is 2010 and not 2100? The U.S.-ROK too also has a contingency plan (O-PLAN 5029, check globalsecurity.org).
Will the U.S. let North Korean generals sell nukes to the highest bidder? No way in hell. The U.S. would, I believe, fight a war to ensure that this will not happen.