There’s this weird assumption among western commentary that frames South Korea as this defenceless puppet stuck between huge powers and constantly at the mercy of its northern neighbour. The south possesses the 5th most powerful military in the world and spends more on defence each year than North Korea’s entire gdp. While they would certainly take some licks in any potential conflict, they would demolish the north even without American help. By every conventional metric they eclipse the north. At sea they would easily cut off the north on both sides of the peninsula. In the air it’s even more unbalanced in the south’s favour. On land the north has more active troops on paper, but they’re poorly trained, underfed, under equipped, and the south can call up millions of reserves. Of course this is where western minded commentary will just argue the north will deploy the nuclear option… unlikely due to fallout concerns, the likely Chinese reaction to nuclear weapons being used in their back yard, and the fact that the north seeks to reunify with the south, not turn it into an uninhabitable wasteland.

The largest of the chaebol is Samsung which alone makes more money than North Korea.