This work was made possible by support and patient critique from many, many people. All errors are of course mine (and my regrets, in particular, for the oversight in using pinyin romanization for Kuomintang; nothing was meant by it).

I find that storytelling elites in South Korea and Taiwan challenged the narrative orthodoxy of oneness to varying degrees during democratization. Their revisionism mattered greatly for how the two nations would come to pursue—or abandon—unification as a national objective.

I look to their democratic struggles, and how “storytelling elites” sought to re-narrate nationhood. I think of storytelling elites as those with the institutional and rhetorical resources to contest the official narrative—e.g., dissident intellectuals, historians, civil society leaders, and so on.

The paper explores how regime-building (who rules and how) shapes and is shaped by nation-building (who belongs). Why have “One Korea” narratives become entrenched in South Korea, and “One China” narratives dislodged in Taiwan since their modern founding?

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