I recommend the Blowback podcast season on Korea. It may be sobering on the state Korea is in. Some things to keep in mind: Korea was colonized/occupied/brutalized by Japan. At some point, the US sort of took over on doing the same thing, through a combination of direct military force and the puppet leader Syngman-Rhee; who lead an extremely repressive government. I don’t remember the exact timeline of things, of when the DPRK was officially formed, but somewhere in there, Kim Il-Sung was organizing for liberation and creating what would become the DPRK. Liberation forces tried to liberate “South Korea”, but got pushed back by US forces (who did lots of civilian killing and destroying infrastructure, not unlike what israel has done in Gaza). The US forces were going to continue on and try to wipe out the liberation forces and probably go on to attack China from there if they could get away with it. However, China stepped in and helped them beat back US occupation forces.

The end result was the split that exists to this day. Note that the designation of “North Korea” and “South Korea” was literally drawn up by US generals on a map. “South Korea” (Occupied Korea) is basically a puppet state of the US, still now, after all of that. That doesn’t mean it has no autonomy at all, but you can bet that if there was wind of political will toward liberation, the US occupier would quickly try to return to the days of Syngman-Rhee and stamp it out violently, if necessary. As it is, though I’m not up to date on the degree of political repression it currently has, it surely has some already. The brutality inflicted on Korea is not that far back in history and there are undoubtedly Koreans who wish for reunification and to be free of occupation. But wanting it and being able to create it are two different things when you have a violent occupying force entrenched there.

If it were as simple as radicalizing some people, Korea would have been liberated decades ago, when the US was taking over on occupying it.