Please. It seems it’s only the older generation — to include the famed 386’ers — who are fixated on reunification and the plight of the North Koreans. I would venture to say that the younger generation — 30 and below — couldn’t care less about what goes on in North Korea.
Furthermore, it’s this guilt you describe that resulted in the completely ineffectual sunshine policies of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyon. If South Korea is so torn and guilt-wracked by its prosperity when contemplating the North, why doesn’t it just surrender? Conversely, if the South wishes to save the people of the North, why don’t they begin all-out propaganda and active measures campaigns designed to result in the overthrow of the current regime up there?
No one in the South, young or old, wants to get into the discussion about what will realistically happen should the North collapse: China will immediately and militarily move in, take over at least down to the DMZ, and effectively absorb the North into the motherland. There is no way in hell China would allow a democratic Korea to sit on its border.