(Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious, because every time this subject comes up, everyone starts throwing around the "China doesn't want 25M refugees overnight" argument, so I assume there's some background I'm missing.)
Those governments also fell internally, meaning the people were pushing for a change and were somewhat ready to make it happen. Invading North Korea would be pretty different.
One big unknown (at least to me) is the level of indoctrination. Related to the above, a lot of people in Eastern Europe were fed up with their government, didn't believe anything they said, and were ready to build something better. It seems like a lot more North Koreans might buy into their government's views, in which case they might flee the "evil imperialist invaders." Heck, even without indoctrination, a reasonable person might not want to be near the fighting.
25 million refugees is obviously a bit much. The entire country won't pick up and move. But it would probably be many millions.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_Iraq#Iraq_War_.282...
Not Europe, no - because most of them didn't have the legal status to gain any european citizenship. But million jews rushed into Israel, with a total population of 8 million, which greatly affected the country.
Given that South Korea officially 'wants' unification, they won't have any other choice but to grant citizen status to everyone - and I don't doubt that a LOT of north koreans will jump on this opportunity right away.
Of course they'll have the choice not to immediately grant citizenship to 25 million!
Those were largely peaceful changes. Neither Germany nor the Soviet Union got nuked nor have millions of people die in a war, as is very likely to happen if war breaks out with North Korea. If they had, then yes, there would have been probably millions of refugees trying to run for their lives. Take a look at any other major war and you'll see that this is in fact what happens.
I personally know people whose family was split by the arbitrary North/South border divide. For them, I think absorbing and reintegrating the population of the North Korean means more to them than just an economic burden.
Given that the South Korean government were elected democratically, you would hope that they would be prepared to represent the interests of the population.
There's been lots of talk that this won't happen but it's hard to see how there won't be at least some sort of checks reintroduced. This isn't too unusual, we had the Common Travel Area[2] since 20s well before Schengen but a return to any sort of militarized or "formal" border could easily kick it all off again in the border counties.
For an idea of the difficulty here's what crossing the border looks like the BBC did a little drone video where it's very easy to see how "leaky" it would be [3]. When I was growing up it looked more like this for the main routes [4].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz35L-TBt9M
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area
[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-northern-ireland-40104333/cr...
[4] https://i.pinimg.com/736x/23/a3/54/23a354665613f3aa695f0e5c3...
> South Korea doesn't have the money or the economic poweress help the DPRK like West Germany did with East Germany.
Realistically, a merger has to make sense for the chebols/conglomerates, right?
Edit: also where do China PR and Japan stand on unification? I've read claims that neither is very fond of it?
I think they'll be really fine.
whatever you're suggesting, it's about now or some future time...
If we have to address this at the root, it's China, the pink elephant in the room. China, our biggest trading partner and also an authoritarian government (US is probably kicking itself allowing such a horrible government to be so powerful), is propping up this vassel state and prevent any progress made in the peninsula. If China wasn't propping them up, North Korean government would have already fell long time ago.
So what happens now? Do we just let China keep protecting its puppet until the puppet has shipped a nuclear bomb to a port in Los Angeles? I hope not. I hope the world takes action before then - I hope the world punishes China and North Korea
What you don't realize is that no one (I don't mean average person, I mean politicians and leaders) really cares what the DPRK (by extension the Kims) do to their own people as long as they are not a threat to anyone else. China likes having the DPRK there as a buffer against the American forces in South Korea. It also provides a distraction as China is claiming the entire South China Sea.
South Korea while officially saying they want re-unification doesn't really want it. If and when the DPRK falls, you got 25 million refugees who are barely able to function in the modern world streaming to China or South Korea. China will not take the refugee in, they will either deploy PLA at the border and stop them or take over the DPRK as a puppet state. The economic cost to absorb the refugees is enormous. In the 20 years after West Germany and East Germany merged, over 1.3 trillion euros was spent on the former East Germany and its still behind economically the former West Germany. The GDP per capita for East Germany at the time of the merger was 10000USD (1990 dollars) and right now for DPRK it's less than 1500USD (current dollars). West Germany was also economically much stronger at the time then South Korea is now and has a much higher population (~60M West, ~15M East) compared to the Koreas (~50M South, ~25M North). South Korea doesn't have the money or the economic poweress help the DPRK like West Germany did with East Germany.
EDIT: read this instead, this guy explained what I said much better on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1etaxd/north_kor...