(A little off-topic, but I think relevant)
South Korea is facing an absolutely disastrous collapse of population. Thirty or 40 years from now, they might actually welcome additional people, (even if they are malnourished). At least they speak the language.
(here are some numbers:
The S. Korean birth rate is 0.6 per woman.
This means that a group of 2000 people (1000 married couples) have only 600 children (300 girls), who will have only 180 grandchildren.)
Yep, pretty much anything would be. The main problem with being a puppet state would be a lot of countries would keep the sanctions / embargoes.
(I mean, apart from the lack of sovereignty obvs, but it would still be a freer place than now)
never mind, redundant
If by North Korea you mean their maniacal leader, then yes. If you mean the rest of the sane world, I seriously doubt it. Any attempt by North Korea to unify by force could very well escalate into WW3. We step in to defend South Korea, China steps in to defend North Korea, and off we go.
I thought Kim formally abandoned the goal of reunification a couple of years ago. Yeah, here it is…
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un abandons unification goal with South
NK was instead going to write into their Constitution that destruction of their main enemy (the ROK) is their main goal now.
See also @Chad_Sudan’s post #12 in this thread.
Minor disagreement, because China, being China, wouldn’t let it get to a couple of decades as a “puppet”. I suspect (of course, this is hypothetical) that a large number of NK Citizens would be given “work permits” in other places, including China, and never return. And Chinese “experts” would be sent in to educate and provide professional support for the government, to fix the economy and infrastructure and loot anything of worse. And by a few decades, it would be a de facto Chinese province and there wouldn’t be anyone left trying to pretend otherwise.
Of course, I guess that would be a different sort of “wheels falling off” scenario, where it went from puppet to province. And I also strongly suspect that would be a point where depending on SK population and political will, the Chinese NK could absolutely start promoting a “Korean” unification with the south, possibly successfully!
The other issue is that there is a certain number of people in South Korea who also want a unified Korea, albeit on SK’s terms. They would be highly disgruntled about the prospects of China annexing North Korea, since it would mean the end of any such unification hopes - as if China took over land that ought to rightfully be Korea’s.