This study aims to look at the implications of ‘becoming part of the people or the nation’ during the division of the Korean peninsula and the Korean War with its focus on identity creation among residents of ‘restored areas.’Before the Korean War broke out, inhabitants of the borderland around the middle part of the 38th parallel developed their identity as the ‘people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.’ However, the Korean War led this region to be under the UN Command, and consequently their identity could no longer be defined as the ‘people’ of North Korea. Even though they were neither the North Korean people nor the South Korean nation in terms of legal status, they prepared themselves for becoming the South Korean nation while denying their previous experience and identity as the North Korean people. The Republic of Korea (ROK) took a dual attitude to these ‘previous North Korean people (=non-South Korean nation) who joined its ‘national realm.’ The ROK government granted legal obligation of military service and tax payment as well as legal rights to these residents of restored areas, thereby acknowledging them as one of political entities underlying the ROK. But, it disapproved their autonomous political activities in a belief that they belonged to statute ‘labor.’ So, inhabitants of restored areas were not only the ‘imperfect nation’ but also the ‘discriminated nation’ in the ROK. They couldn’t avoid a massive upheaval of creation of restored areas and their incorporation into the South Korean nation. In this process, they sought ways to adjust themselves to the new environment, which led their identity to shift from the North Korean people to the South Korean nation. They gradually became ‘anticommunist nation’ through their departure from the North Korean people.