There are legitimate differences. While the South Pole has air and some radiation shielding and is somewhat easier to access, its material resources consist, AFAIK, of ice and six months of sunlight. As a homesteading location this is pretty crappy; you need some diversity of elements, and random dirt or regolith is much more usable than pure water ice, as is more frequent sun than "six months of darkness". There's a real sense in which "yes, we can visit or live here more easily, but we can't *colonize* here."

Colonizing the Gobi desert, or even an industrially self-sufficient colony in Montana, seem more apropos comparisons to me. What we see these days is that most people don't want to live in isolated rural areas; they might visit for resource extraction, but they don't stay there. And space is really rural as well as really expensive. We haven't "colonized the oceans" but we do have off-shore oil platforms.

Granted, most people isn't all, and land that wasn't politically claimed (also not Antaractica) could have appeal.