The North Korean military elite will never willingly give up power 😂

So in a word, Korean reunification would come at a massive outlay/cost on many levels along with it taking years if not yeartens/decades for the two halves to adjust, to say nothing of the neglect the native minorities of each (like the recent efforts to put Jeju islanders & native islanders plus Jaegaseung diaspora in more prominent positions in the South, but continual neglect of the Jaegaseung in the North) face? Also, might Korea change from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy should the Kim dynasty such as from the crown princess keep any degree of power carried over from the North?

Red China would not allow it. If the North government fell and the Kims exterminated, Red China would invade and annex the territory. The ONLY positive result would be less starvation of the general populace.

I see a lot of high school brawls where rivals make fun of each other's satoori.

The North Koreans in governmental positions would never give up being North Korean because that position is essentially the equivalent of a South Korean jaebol/chaebol.
Also, Germany "unified," but looking at every aspect of life, the ghost of East Germany still haunts modern Germany.

If north was absorbed into the south it would have to be done over decades. You couldn’t just do a Germany unification. The two are far too different.

unfortunatly it will never happen , both countries are like trying to unite north America and south America.

The North Korean citizens gonna need time to adjust cause its gonna be a total shock and they will take awhile. And most likely south korean citizens gonna distance themself cause of how different they are too.

The most realistic path toward Korean unification would probably begin with the North Korean people overthrowing or replacing their current regime. But even if that happened, South Korea should not immediately absorb North Korea. The economic and social differences are simply too great.

Instead, North Korea should initially remain a separate, functioning country while South Korea and its allies help rebuild its economy, infrastructure, institutions, education, and workforce. The goal should be to make North Korea economically self-sufficient rather than permanently dependent on South Korean aid.

South Korean companies could help create manufacturing jobs in the North, including moving some production that is currently based in China. This would give North Koreans employment, training, and valuable industrial skills while allowing the North Korean economy to develop.

During the transition, the border should remain controlled to prevent a massive migration into South Korea that could overwhelm the South Korean economy and simultaneously drain North Korea of the workers it needs to rebuild. North Koreans should have freedom within their own country, while cross-border migration could gradually be expanded as living standards and economic conditions converge.

The ultimate goal shouldn’t be immediate reunification. It should be stabilization, reconstruction, economic development, and gradual integration first. Once the two economies and societies are capable of functioning together, political reunification could become realistic rather than creating an enormous economic and humanitarian crisis overnight.

Well thought of and presented.

I am German and I'd like to tell the Koreans: Don't make the same mistake we did.Don't just re-unite. Maybe build a very loose Korean Federation with 2
federal states that are more or less autonomous but share a few joint structures like a joint military high command over 2 separate forces with a
commitment to peace from both federal states, That way the US can leave but both China and the US give a security commitment, Over time North and
South can move to a free trade agreement with South Korean industry benefiting from cheap Northern labor and the North from Southern investment.

North Korea: Cruel Government

South Korea: Cruel People

A notable economic positive would be the reduced military expenditure for the new state, as a move to a fully professional army could be considered.

bro only gave the bad ending option 😭

A lot of people have been predicting that in 50 years back in the 1990's both Korea's will merge it has been 30 years since then and due to both China and USA I can easily say no such thing will happen. Just like they used to predict that in 50 years we would be landing on the Mars. Now due to new knowledge of how poisonous Mars soil is no such thing will happen either.

This is only tangentially related, but as a gyopo, one thing that was always interesting to me was the ethnic Koreans in central Asia and how the people in places like Kazakhstan have changed in the near century after WW2.

Nice video, thank you for discussing this concept! But the thing is that you do not pour a water into an aggresive acid, the water or the acid should be modified enough to make the reaction as calm as possible. This is how I view the issue and this is why a simple reunification would not work, due to both Koreas not being as similar as East and West Germany back in those days.

I am definitely not any expert on this, but my take would be to annex one of Koreas (preferably the north one), develop it individually to reach a sufficient standard of living by today's standards and then connect it to the south one, once the north one is developed enough to not make any of those crisis the guy in the video mentioned.

One thing that was not mentioned was the language, which is a hot topic for me, since I am a linguist. Both languages differ from each other and honestly, I will share an unpopular opinion by saying that I like the North Korean dialect more, due to it being more pure, preserving their native words from the old times (even though it is inspired by their Anti-Western politics) in comparison with words in South Korean where they simply used an internationally known one. The thing is that it sometimes make me sad how people in the world willingly make their languages dirty with English borrowings for example, destroying their identity. Yes, borrowings are inevitable, but that does not mean we must mandatorily take it to the next level. When young people from my country (Czech Republic) speak "their own language", I can hear more English words than Czech ones and I will not pretend "this is a language evolution".

Simply said, both nations have different languages and they are not too mutually intelligible, so language issue is also important there, as unified Korea would need an unified language to be able to speak to their brothers and sisters in the north without using any lingua franca, to make the connection even more natural. Unless some ԁumbаѕѕ would decide to throw it all into a bin and make English the official language for whole Korea, which would be a nightmare for me! Ireland made a bit similar mistake and they are slowly losing their beautiful language, which is basically the language of their enemies, as Ireland and United Kingdom were not exactly friends in the past.

What would have to happen would be North Korea remaining as a separate country under a provisional government… and North Koreans would probably be subject to tight immigration restrictions into South Korea to prevent a refugee crisis

That would probably be the case for many years, until conditions in North Korea could be improved to the point that infrastructure could be built

Then, in time, South Korean companies could start expanding into the North, the immigration restrictions could be lifted and the border could be removed, etc

How do you unite a Democracy with a Dictatorship ? It’s like trying to mix oil and water

I doubt the North Korean civilians would object.