Does South Korea survive unity?

No way are the South Koreans keeping the nukes. Obama, with the new anti-nuclear rhetoric and debates over proliferation in Iran, won't be happy with it. Japan won't be happy with it due to the animosity with Korea and the anti-nuclear sentiment. And China sure as hell will be pissed about it, considering that they will share a land border with a new nuclear power, upsetting the status quo.

If this happens after Obama we might well let them keep the nukes depending on what relations with China are like. Dangerous yes but if unification occurs after some Taiwan Straits crisis or similar US-PRC issue, the US might like the idea of a nuclear ally in the region a la France and Britain in the Cold War.
 
An enormous problem would be the sense of marginalization North Koreans would inevitably feel. Northerners would immediately become second class citizens in their own land. They haven't the job skills to compete in the new Korea. It wont be long before people are going to feel resentment toward the Southerners and nostalgia for the "good old days", just as we tend to forget bad experiences in high school and remember the good ones.

Unifying Korea would be a monumental task all around.
 
There's also the environmental cost to consider. The Korean DMZ is currently acting as a reserve for a lot of endangered species and I find it unlikely that a reunified Korea would manage to preserve this in a meaningful form.
 
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