In Korea and Its Futures, Roy Richard Grinker argues that the continued conflict between north and south Korea, and the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula, must be understood within the broader social and cultural contexts in which Koreans live. Grinker suggests that a fundamental obstacle to peace on the peninsula is that south Korea has become a nation in which economic, political, and cultural identities are defined largely in opposition to north Korea.

He further demonstrates that in spite of its status as a sacred goal for all Koreans, the idea of unification threatens the world in which almost every south Korean has been born and raised. In other words. Grinker points out, unification is largely perceived by south Koreans not as the integration of different identities but as the southern conquest and assimilation of the north - in short, as winning the war.