I had to login to move a thread from the archive and this thread caught my eye. I have lived in South Korea for about a quarter of the last five years, so this subject is obviously very important to me.
Some points. The South Koreans view the populace of the North as cousins held hostage. Everyone I have talked to desires reunification despite the monetary cost. The cost in blood is where people differ how reunification should be achieved.
Regarding manpower necessary to occupy the North, the ROK has a very capable army and massive reserves. As I mentioned above the motivation to unify is strong and I expect for at least a year all South Koreans (who are very duty bound) would make the sacrifices necessary.
Going into a little depth in to the duty they have towards their countrymen, I will tell you of one of the expectation of their hospitals. If someone is in long term recovery a family member is expected to come into the hospital and perform many of the duties that nurses would normally handle. If a person does not have a relative to help them, the family members of the other people in the room (their were 8 in the case I saw) will pull together to assist that person. It is not considered an annoyance, inconvenience, or hardship it is just their duty.
I have an anecdote about the brainwashing of the North Korean populace as well. While I was in Korea I happened to see a documentary about a North Korean woman who built a raft and floated something like 20km to the South. She was a 20 something widow with two children. From what I gathered she lived a simple agrarian life made much harder by the death of her husband. It was so hard in fact that while she worked in the market she would send her 3 and 5 year old children to look around the area of the market where rice was traded to pick up individual grains of rice which had escaped the bags.
Her five year old child was getting ill and she took him to the doctor. The doctors told her that he had leukemia and simply was going to die. They even went so far as to suggest that she give more of her meager food supply to the three year old since the five year old was a lost cause.
This woman, who in my mind seems to represent the average population, knew that the lives of her children would be better in the South. All that it took for her to overcome the fear she had of the consequences of an attempted escape was the pending death of one of her children. If you remove that fear I feel a vast majority of the North Korean population will be ecstatic about reunification.
To finish this post on a happy note the North Korean woman arrived safely and her son was successfully treated. She has a job and the last scene in the documentary showed them preparing for a substantial meal while the boy, now 8, was playing an X-box.
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