Like I said, all the files were present but mostly in different versions, so they are present for KDE to run.
My guess is that these are just libraries and you could install them without breaking the programs that use the more recent versions, but I'm in no way qualified to tell that with certainty.
I've heard so much about dependency hell, it would just seem too easy to install the missing libraries and be good to go ....
I don't know about creating symbolic links though.