I'm a South Korean and can only partially agree with you. Yes, some of us don't want it but definitely much more young people long for the reunification. Except some extremists, most of the naysayers oppose it because of the economic burden of it not abhorrence for them you mentioned.
Secondly, I don't know the whole opinions of the rest of the world but for the stakeholders like China, Japan and the U.S., I don't think they really want us to reunite. Korea has played a role of a bulwark for superpowers. For the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the beginning, and now China took the position of the Soviet Union. After the unification they will lose their influence on Korea. And Japan will hate its rival (industrially and historically) gaining huge resource for future advancement. I mean, no one can exactly predict the results and effects of the unification. Your opinion about the intentions of other countries' heads seems too naive for me.
To sum up, most of us want to achieve the unification as long as we carefully plan it so as to minimize the financial burden. Probably almost all Koreans agree that the unification will make the country much more powerful in the long run though it'll deteriorate the economy in the early years. However, I don't find we can achieve it in this century because of diplomatic reasons as well as internal ones. Too many world powers are related to it so it's an extremely hard problem to solve. I consider it one of the open problems in diplomacy like the ones in math.
> And Japan will hate its rival (industrially and historically) gaining huge resource for future advancement.
Just look at how much of an impact reunification had on the economy of Germany. And they were not inheriting millions of half-starved, ill-educated, brain-washed people in a country which has been living in autarky for decades. If the only thing which mattered to Japanese leadership was keeping Korea down, they would push for reunification at all cost.
germany is the current european leader also because of the reunification, and in fact many people feared this would happen before the reunification (i.e. former italian 4-times-premier Andreotti is quoted as saying "I love germany, that's why I'd prefer to have two of them").
One thing is to say that German has the best economy of the Eurozone, which is a fact we can all agree on. Another thing entirely is to attribute this to reunification, considering how the situation is in the Eastern half of Germany.
Secondly, I don't know the whole opinions of the rest of the world but for the stakeholders like China, Japan and the U.S., I don't think they really want us to reunite. Korea has played a role of a bulwark for superpowers. For the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the beginning, and now China took the position of the Soviet Union. After the unification they will lose their influence on Korea. And Japan will hate its rival (industrially and historically) gaining huge resource for future advancement. I mean, no one can exactly predict the results and effects of the unification. Your opinion about the intentions of other countries' heads seems too naive for me.
To sum up, most of us want to achieve the unification as long as we carefully plan it so as to minimize the financial burden. Probably almost all Koreans agree that the unification will make the country much more powerful in the long run though it'll deteriorate the economy in the early years. However, I don't find we can achieve it in this century because of diplomatic reasons as well as internal ones. Too many world powers are related to it so it's an extremely hard problem to solve. I consider it one of the open problems in diplomacy like the ones in math.