During a speech on Saturday, Park Geun-Hye, the president of South Korea, gave a message to North Koreans, saying that they are always welcome to escape their "gruesome realities" and come to South Korea. She talked about Kim Jong Eun in that speech as well, which is part of why a North Korean article bashing her was soon released. She has also received some flak from the floor leader of an opposing party, Woo Sang-Ho, who argues that even if they were only taking in 100,000 refugees, life could not be normal, but if North Korea collapsed and their people fled to South Korea, it would be like the Middle East.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/south-park-geun-hye-appeals-north-koreans-161001145728177.html
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/10/04/South-Koreas-Park-Geun-hye-criticized-for-urging-North-Korean-defections/3941475594788/
I will not include my last source (about the North Korean article) because it has a swear word in it. ><
This is a very interesting situation. Obviously, South Korea would have a hard time absorbing a large refugee populations from North Korea, but is that what President Park really wants anyway? I imagine that she's aware that the North Korean regime is weakening, and her real goal is to have enough people flee the north to make it even weaker. At some point, if the north collapses, it will make an ugly mess, but it will also provide an opportunity for reuniting the Korean peninsula. I think you might find it interesting to take a look at how Germany handled reunification starting in 1989. It's another situation where there was a formerly communist country being reunited with a democratic country, with all the economic inequality you would expect from that situation. How did they do it? Is it possible that the two Koreas could do the same? Remember that the average person in the 1980s did not see the opportunity coming for Easter Europe to be freed from communism, so there may be just as sudden an opportunity in Korea.
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