The article examines South Korean narratives about peacebuilding with North Korea, focusing on how such narratives avoid or invoke ontological insecurity—the disruption of a stable conception of the world and one’s place in it. The article contributes by demonstrating that peace processes can be initiated without process imperilling ontological insecurity arising if domestic constituents reach intersubjective understanding regarding constituent components of a peace process.

Using South Korea as a case study, the article explores how peace narratives evolve, suggesting four key narrative components in peace processes. These are —challenging conflict narratives, humanizing the other, recognizing the other, and envisioning a peaceful future. Charting the progress of these four components, the article demonstrates, via a Wittgenstein inspired language games analytical framework, how South Korean conservatives and liberals played by the rules of peace process language games. Challenging conflictual narratives and humanizing the other, made it possible to conceive of a previously inconceivable peace process with North Korea. This demonstrates, as Wittgenstein stated, that ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world’. Ultimately in the South Korean case, the absence of "thick recognition"—accepting North Korea’s subjectivity as it is, led intersubjective understanding to collapse when North Korea did not do what the South expected it to do. As peace process imperilling ontological insecurity arose, liberals and conservatives turned on one another in a bid protect the South Korea they had taken pains to create.

The article is available on the publisher website, click HERE.