South Korea is worried about what will happen if North Korea begins to collapse (in earnest). Thus, they’re trying to reconcile, but the two nations are very different. From South Korean Aid To North Increases Tensions With U.S.:
“North Koreans look so poor. It’s like South Korea in the 1960s,” says 56-year-old Paek Jae Hyun, the chief executive of a chemical company in the South, returning from a recent visit. “We have to help them a lot.”
But the Northerners are also seen as alien. In 2003, a group of visiting North Korean cheerleaders caused a stir when they leapt from their bus to rescue pictures of Kim Jong Il getting soaked in the rain. They were teary eyed that images of the country’s “great leader” should be subjected to such treatment. North Koreans are taught to revere likenesses of Mr. Kim and his father, and can be punished for disrespecting their pictures. The cheerleaders’ devotion appeared so outlandish that it prompted one weekly magazine in Seoul to ask on its cover: “Are we really one people?”