First of all, I thank you for responding and bringing statistics to this conversation. You are right that I seemed to have generalize what my friends said to all young Koreans, at least in the way I wrote it. I should have been more careful with what I said.

I think the article you linked actually gives ammunition to my claim that as time passes and memories fade with them, reunification is becoming less popular. I mean, the headline ends with the clause: "dreams of unity fade into past for young South Koreans." One of the 20-somethings interviewed here opposes unification based on economic and financial grounds. As another poster commented, though, a majority still do support reunification.

With respect to my saying the rest of the world wants them to reunite, I admit that was hyperbole. The reason I said it was that every single comment on this story so far started with the assumption that reunification was right and we want it to happen[1]. I think something closer to the truth is that a lot of us in the western world don't necessarily want to see reunification happen as much as we want the North Korean government to fail. Anyone who has heard about the famines and seen pictures of children dead in the street would want that. Reunification, of course, would be the "natural" step after that. However, it's ironic that for many South Koreans, they are simply indifferent, or outright opposed to the idea.

So, I what I was pointing to was the fact that while a lot of us in the west seem to think reunification is the end goal, a significant number of Koreans, the actual people who we are discussing, do not favor it. I felt it was fair to point that out since the conversation at the time seemed to have hinged on the assumption that it was the right thing and the South Koreans themselves wants to go along with it.

Somewhat related, but this [2] has always stuck with me. This video was aired back during the time when tensions were running high and CNN was ablaze with talk about Kim Jong-Un and the NK state-run media said this and that, etc. At that time, I was considering studying in SK for grad school, and the typical response involved some shock that I'd want to go to a warzone. It's ironic that in SK itself, people were much more interested in their pop culture, their daily lives, than the hatred spewing from up North that was littering our news articles here in the west.

[1] So by "the rest of the world", I meant, "you all in the room", the kind of hyperbole you let out when you want to say a dissenting word against the common opinion.

[2] http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/international/2013/0...