They have the option of joining South Korea anytime they want, that option has always been open to them
To join up with a country that supported this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun_Doo-hwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_massacres
The South Korea that was allied with the US, who makes agreements like this to achieve their goals? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ap-us-allowed-korean-massacre-in-1950/
Go look at the status both countries are at today instead of referencing 70 year old events. Whatever path South Korea took clearly worked and North Korea’s path did not. A rational, intelligent person would admit when they were wrong and concede
Haiti and Cuba also took very different paths. Many people would prefer to live a half-decent life with access to healthcare and higher education than live in a hyper-privatized country in the sphere of US-influence.
On the other hand, people will risk a lot to take a higher salary at any expense, like the Irish who moved to the US while being treated like shit, just because they had a much higher wage.
North Korea, for its awful geography, long history of natural disasters, and low % arable land, while being sanctioned, was immediately wrecked once the USSR dissolved and they had no one to save them. South Korea, a still-developing nation, received a lot of money from the US to bolster their country, much like Poland after the fall of the Warsaw Pact and Soviets. In addition, the US makes a massive profit off keeping countries like Poland and S. Korea in their influence, so higher wages and greater consumerism is encouraged, and easier to achieve, in a way that feels like consistent quality-of-life improvements.
I don’t deny that many people will risk everything to escape sanctions and to move into a country where they can make $300,000 annually, but that doesn’t make poor countries evil or anything. People get paid millions to flee North Korea, make it through solitary confinement in the South, and get a successful career in the US, like Yeonmi Park (okay, maybe not millions - that’s a gross over-exaggeration: https://www.nknews.org/2015/06/claims-n-korean-defector-earns-41k-per-speech-completely-incorrect/). However, the higher salary and higher standard of living comes at a massive cost to many countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
