Conflict as imbalance: political healing of and through emotions in Korea

Abstract

What is the role of emotions in conflict resolution, and how can a reconceptualisation of emotions in international relations beyond the discipline be used to understand North Korea’s state conduct and conflict on the Korean peninsula? Drawing on the ontology and epistemology of East Asian medicine, this research explores the role of emotions in conflict resolution by using insights from Wuxing, the medical theory of the five elements/phases, its modus operandi of healing emotional imbalance with counter-emotions, and the principles of harmony and proportionality. I propose the following ‘treatment’: uncovering counterproductive roles and relations of American, South Korean and North Korean actors, given the attention to pathogenic factors in East Asian medicine; reconceptualising emotions in non-binary terms and accounting for suppressed and disproportionally expressed emotions and their effect on relations; strengthening the North Korean corpus to increase resilience; and countering emotional imbalance with counter-emotions. East Asian medicine addresses a system of disharmony, relocates misplaced radicals, and re-adjusts roles, powers and responsibilities. Given philosophical and conceptual differences between mainstream/scientific and endogenous academic approaches, the ontology and epistemology of East Asian medicine complement and go beyond existing understandings about the role of emotions in international relations and conflict resolution.

Keywords:

• East Asian medicine
• Korea
• emotions
• balance
• peace
• conflict resolution

When the ‘ontological ground’ of effects is a state of constant transformation, where there is no European metaphysics requiring fixity of essence of discreteness of material form as a criterion of ‘reality’, it is patterns in and of time and space, rather than material structures and mechanical functions, that must be perceived.

(Needham 1994, 17)

Introduction

Conflict, in whatever manifestation, is a social and emotional phenomenon that extends beyond mere actio-reactio logic. Such is exemplified by the Korean case, which is not only a military but also an ideological matter. What is often regarded as North Korean aggression and the related conflict prevail despite (and because of) attempts to resolve them. This research takes place against the background of an over-reliance on mainstream understandings of the role of emotions in international relations (IR) and the Korean conflict to account for this perpetuation.

Drawing on the ontology and epistemology of East Asian medicine, this research explores the role of emotions in the Korean conflict and the broader realm of conflict resolution. Here, conflict is reconceptualised not in terms of measurable and scientific data and through essentialist binaries such as a threat–victim dualism, but rather as relations with a particular focus on deviations from and approaches towards ideal-typical balance. In so doing, this paper advances unconventional conflict-diagnoses and treatment-proposals derived from the understanding of diseases, imbalances and conflicting relations in East Asian medicine.

As East Asian medicine ideal-typically does not limit itself to the linear logic of causality (Kaptchuk 2000), a question asking for its ‘why?’ is considered on par with a general diagnosis of imbalances. Thus, the ‘how?’ and ‘what?’ (questions usually rejected by IR-centred academia for being overly descriptive) are considered equally legitimate here. Such questions are indispensable for a decent understanding of existing relations, whereas limiting oneself to the ‘why’ risks a predisposition to restrict the analysis to agents and causality.

The case is made that existing mainstream approaches to conflict resolution leave room to account for emotions and thereby risk leading to (mis)conceptions that further aggravate the conflict. The case-specific aim is to demonstrate that the conflict on the Korean peninsula is protracted and may even be intensified if emotions are not sufficiently accounted for – in other words, if emotions continue to be conceptualised in binary terms with an exclusive focus on visible emotions based on a causal cognitive frame. In response, this research proposes insights from East Asian medicine. The focus here is the theory of the five elements/phases, Wuxing, and its understanding of phenomena in relational terms (referring to relations between bodies and within), as opposed to the prevalent focus on actors. In so doing, Wuxing provides a novel understanding of the role of emotions and thus the protraction of conflicts and their remedies. This novel understanding pertains to a reconceptualisation of emotions in conflict away from a good–bad binary. It is, moreover, inclusive of suppressed emotions and underlines the role of proportionality in politics. While doing so, the importance of focusing on the relationships between actors rather than on the actors and their actions themselves is emphasised throughout.

The subsequent section reviews existing scholarly accounts on the role of emotions in IR and conflict resolution while highlighting the shortcomings of the mainstream IR literature. Thereafter, Wuxing of East Asian medicine is presented as a solution to such gaps, followed by an empirical analysis of the conflict on the Korean peninsula, which highlights the practical utility of Wuxing when wishing to diagnose and treat conflicts.

Knowledge gaps concerning emotions in conflict resolution

The first gap in terms of the role of emotions in conflict resolution concerns the exclusive focus of scholarship on the outward orientation of emotions and their manifestations. The focus of McDoom (2012), for instance, on the effect of fear on intergroup polarisation between Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis leaves room for analysing how emotions work regarding body-internal group coherence and balance. Another example is Halperin and Bar-Tal’s (2011) focus on group members’ perceptions of conflict disagreements and their beliefs about body-external ‘others’. Their paper treats emotions as existing between entities/bodies while allowing one’s curiosity about emotional manifestations inside the bodies to prevail. Addressing group-internal components could reveal potential benefits of emotions, such as a move towards internal balance or coherence. This paper hypothesises via East Asian medicine that imbalance is inherently related to resilience issues remediable from within – as exemplified in the Korean case study.

Another gap concerns suppressed emotions as scholars focus exclusively on their expressed variant (Hutchison and Bleiker 2014). Mental stress is an example of an emotion that is not always expressed and where suppression may lead to diseases. Koschut’s (2014) valuable re-conceptualisation of security communities into ‘emotional security communities’ defines emotional communities as a body linked by a shared understanding of emotions and their expressions, listing examples such as supporters of a sports team or a religious fellowship. Koschut’s account nonetheless focuses only on the expression of emotions¹ without further questioning the freedoms of such expressions in respective localities, such as the suppressed and prosecuted practice of Islam in China’s Xinjiang region. Likewise, the subsequently discussed suppression of freedoms of speech and movement in/by North and South Korea links to emotional and political imbalance.

A third significant gap concerns the binary perception of negative emotions as ‘bad’ and positive emotions as ‘good’. Most scholars subscribe to this binary in their study of intergroup conflict (eg Halperin 2008; McDoom 2012). This conception precludes the analysis of the relationship between various emotions and their interactive effects (see McDoom [2012] on fear in Rwanda’s genocide; Heller [2014] on Russia’s anger vis-à-vis the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and McDermott [2014] on anger in presidents). However, an interesting outlier is Koschut’s (2014, 534) remark that whether a particular emotion is ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ is solely determined by the members of the emotional community. Along these lines, an alternative conceptualisation of emotions might be that of Wuxing, which perceives emotions not as good or bad but as either in excess or in deficit. In tandem with the previous two gaps identified here, a reconceptualisation of emotions helps us perceive the Korean conflict as a matter of imbalanced relations and emotions. The remedy for this would not require the absence of bad emotional expressions (eg the cessation of North Korean missile tests) but rather the adjustment of relations whereby both ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ emotions can help steer relations towards balance.

Dominant IR theories are biased towards ‘observing’ and ‘measuring’ and thus often treat emotions as an ideal-typical counterpart of rationality. One example is Halperin and Bar-Tal’s link between ‘bad emotions’ and biased processing of new information. This might have its roots in the prevalent foundation of mainstream scholarly insights that borrow exclusively from Western disciplines such as neuroscience (eg Crawford 2014; Bleiker and Hutchison 2008; Hutchison and Bleiker 2014; Åhäll 2018) or from Western philosophy (eg Wolf 2011). Overall, these gaps preclude significant explanatory elements, which are subsequently filled by Wuxing and availed of to shed light on the conflict on the Korean peninsula.

Wuxing as an alternative approach

This section introduces Wuxing and demonstrates that it functions as a viable alternative to and complements mainstream accounts on the role of emotions in conflict (resolution). Wuxing² is an alternative knowledge repertoire related to humans and their emotions while not limiting itself to binary conceptions or dogmatically defined categories (Maciocia 2015). It comprises the five elements/phases of fire, earth, metal, water and wood, which pertain to matters such as emotions or stages of development (Law and Kesti 2014). These constitute the centre of East Asian medicine and its theme of balance and harmony (terms used interchangeably here), which helps shed light on the conflict on the Korean peninsula as emotions can be understood in this non-mainstream manner and thereby account for social phenomena that would otherwise go unnoticed. The specific workings of Wuxing are introduced in the following section, and its relatability to the Korean case study is alluded to throughout this section before it is discussed in more detail.

Definition of relevant terms

The body

According to Maciocia, East Asian medicine defines the body as an ‘integrated whole’ and as a ‘landscape of functional relationships which provide total integration of bodily functions, emotions […] and environmental influences’ (2015, 94). Similarly, this paper defines the body as a political entity along with its relations vis-à-vis other bodies and its internal relationships among its components – a field the aforementioned literature on emotions left unaddressed. A body does not necessarily equal the Westphalian notion of a state but may also denote, for instance, a local community or the relationship between such communities. Ling (2014) asserts that emotions do not require a body when referring to spiritual elements at work – that is, transhumanism and non-dualism of the body and the social, whereby the emotions of one person can enter another through the atmosphere/mood and materialise in institutions and norms (Crawford 2014; Åhäll 2018), or the absence of such through political indoctrination and inhibition of human activities through moods such as fear, as in North Korea.

Yin, Yang and Qi

The concept of Yin Yang functions as the essence of East Asian medicine’s ontology. In contrast to the dominant occidental (Aristotelian) ontology that is based on an ‘opposition of contraries’ (Maciocia 2015, 3), Yin Yang states that each entity can be itself and simultaneously its ontological opposite. As such, Yin is in Yang, and Yang is in Yin (Maciocia 2015). This is by no means far-fetched as in diplomacy the willingness to escalate (eg the emotion of anger) and the willingness to negotiate can indeed co-exist. This understanding would also suggest that, for instance, Kim Jong-Un may be simultaneously reckless and concerned or that a particular emotion embodied in a foreign policy response vis-à-vis Pyongyang may be balance-­conducive or destabilising depending on the proportionality (elaborated below).

The definitions of Qi range from power to force to energy. The general attributes of Qi are its functions of warming, strengthening and protecting (Maciocia 2015). It manifests in various forms. Ultimately, ‘the body’ is a form of Qi. At the same time, however, Qi also constitutes the mind, which contrasts with the Platonian duality between the material and the intangible (Maciocia 2015). This highlights the need to go beyond positivist ontologies and thus consider suppressed emotions in addition to the expressed/visible. Wuxing thus helps account for intangible phenomena and system components in North Korea, such as suppressed ­emotions and less visible balance-disturbing and/or disharmonised relations – phenomena usually left unaddressed by more conventional means of inquiry citing operationalisable constraints.

Wuxing and emotions

Wuxing distinguishes between the seven broad key emotions of anger, joy, grief/sadness, anxiety/thinking and fear (Maciocia 2015). If any of these are suppressed or expressed out of proportion during social interactions, it is symptomatic of a distorted balance and an underlying disease – such as the conflict on the Korean peninsula. According to Wuxing, emotional imbalances can be remedied with respective counter-emotions: anger helps solve worry, anxiety/thinking helps solve fear, fear helps solve joy, joy helps solve sadness/grief, and sadness/grief helps solve anger (Zhang 2007). This is known as the controlling sequence.³ This understanding can prevent state conduct fuelled by anger from being remedied through additional anger, which would risk further exasperation as has often been observed regarding US–North Korean relations where, for instance, missile tests were met with economic sanctions against the regime.

The concept of Du

Another concept of Wuxing is that of proportionality (Du). According to Du, emotions are not conceptualised as inherently good or bad but as being in excess or deficit. Excess or insufficiency of an emotion can lead to disease. Disproportionate treatment may also hinder healing (Zhang 2007).

Balance/harmony (via emotions)

East Asian medicine does not provide a fixed definition of harmony. What may lead to healing in the case of one body can facilitate disease in another (Kaptchuk 2000). While conflict is viewed as a disease of and within the system, peace as a key concept in IR can be re-­conceptualised in terms of balance/harmony between the system’s parts. Harmony can thus be referred to as political tranquillity, comprising social norms and relationships. If an actor becomes overly ambitious/dissatisfied with a given status quo, it disturbs the balance.

Wuxing summarises events conducive to balance under the ‘controlling sequence’, which describes the interrelationship among the five elements, whereby each element controls and is controlled by another element (Maciocia 2015). Such is not the same as the ‘generating sequence’, which indicates which elements generate each other. For instance, water (fear) generates wood (anger), so imbalance or disease caused by excess anger is not remedied by a decrease in water but by an increase in metal (sadness), which then accumulates and impairs the function of wood (anger). Conversely, departures from balance that facilitate disease are categorised as the disturbance of harmony through disproportionality (excess and deficit) (Maciocia 2015).

In cases of emotional disease, remedies exist within East Asian medicine to help achieve emotional balance and thereby healing: Treating emotional imbalances with counter-­emotions, strengthening the body condition that increases its resistance to diseases and pathogens (the socio-political and economic infrastructure), and addressing balance-­disturbing pathogens (the detoxification of a toxic diplomatic environment consisting of elements such as insults and threats). East Asian medicine circumscribes the presence of a pathogen in the air as ‘wind’, which enters the body and destabilises the harmony from within (Maciocia 2015). One may draw a link to emotions as moods in the atmosphere (see Ling 2014; Åhäll 2018). Possible remedies to strengthen the body include foreign direct investment, economic aid, or lifting sanctions, as exemplified in the case section.

Wuxing’s contributions: suppressed emotions

Three expected contributions of Wuxing to the analysis of the role of emotions in conflict resolution are presented here. The first concerns the literature’s almost exclusive reliance on expressed emotions. While this predilection is understandable given the positivist foundation of most research, the neglect of suppressed emotions impedes meticulous conflict analysis. Through Wuxing, we are made aware of, for instance, the missing political freedoms of the North Korean people and the thereby suppressed joy in their lives. Rather than arguing that such an absence of freedoms is bad in its own right while referring to narratives such as ‘universal human rights’, Wuxing enables us to argue by way of their counterproductivity to internal harmony: One is likely to regard the suppression of emotions as natural and unproblematic when bearing in mind the aforementioned controlling sequence of Wuxing whereby one element/emotion controls (arguably, ‘suppresses’) another. Here, however, ‘controlling’ does not equal ‘suppressing’ (Maciocia 2015, 28): Whereas the controlling sequence concerns the maintenance and care of one ‘organ’ by another, the actual suppression of emotions inhibits the flow of Qi through emotional stress, which facilitates disease.

Wuxing’s contributions: inward-oriented emotions

The second contribution of Wuxing is its consideration of the inward-oriented influence of emotions. In the realm of international relations, even if emotions are directed towards an international counterpart (such as North Korea’s anger vis-à-vis the United States), there is an underlying structure driving this emotion that can disrupt a state’s internal harmony, such as the starvation of one’s citizens for military-economic purposes. In turn, an imbalanced body⁴ emerges, such as that of North Korea, which may impede reconciliation with South Korea.

The influence of emotions on inner balance is essential, as the behaviour caused by emotions is a means to achieve a certain ‘sense of the self’ (Solomon 2012), such as the ontological security of Kim Jong-Un. Kinnvall and Mitzen (2017, 2) see an important connection between a ‘sense of biographical continuity and wholeness’ and the feeling of being ontologically secure, and they relate the challenge of such ontological security to emotions such as anxiety and the disturbance of internal balance, arguably if in excess.

Wuxing’s contributions – good vs bad emotions

The last major contribution is the re-conceptualisation of emotions in a non-binary ­manner – a response to the omnipresent categorisation by the existing literature of emotions as either good or bad. Bad emotions such as anger can be as contributive to harmony as joy. Rather than categorising emotions as inherently good or bad, Wuxing refers to the concept of proportionality and thereby conceptualises emotions as either in excess or deficit. In this manner, joy (overjoy) can be as harmful as sadness.

Linking this to Yin Yang, there is sadness in happiness, and vice versa. As such, sadness cannot be addressed in isolation from other emotions, such as happiness. Therefore, the frequent isolation of emotions for analyses of conflicts would either misinform or leave elements unaddressed that are crucial for conflict resolution. Likewise, while the categorisation and analysis of ‘bad’ emotions likely necessitate an aggressive policy response, Wuxing would frame such a case as, for instance, an emotion in excess and propose a treatment based on proportionality.

Empirical analysis: conflict resolution in Korea through balance

The upheavals on the Korean peninsula are not novel and are subject to a long history of tributary systems, invasions and ideologically antagonistic relations. Recent provocations between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington range from military drills to nuclear tests to more direct clashes, such as the Yeonpyeong Island bombardment by North Korea (BBC 2010). The conflict on the peninsula is not only military in nature but also ideological. As a remnant of the Cold War, Korea provides a contrast between liberalism and authoritarianism. Moreover, the different levels of development and the accompanying socio-cultural changes cause increasingly distant relations between North and South Korea.

Such events are usually regarded as reasons for conflict on the peninsula. Most scholars have focused on analysing the causes and effects of provocations by the Kim regime. North Korea is often referred to as different things depending on its counterpart and is defined as a threat, nuisance or geopolitical necessity (Vyas et al. 2015). Through East Asian medicine, however, this paper defines the North Korean state rather as a corpus, the interactions with which and within which therefore lead to balance or imbalance.

Research on the role of emotions in conflicts related to North Korea is limited. Most noteworthy is Choi’s (2015) paper on reconceptualising reconciliation as love in/through non-coercive togetherness. She criticises the top-down dogmatism of the existing ways of conflict resolution. The second camp of scholarship on emotions concerns the relationship between citizens and the Kim regime: Green and Denney (2021) and Jung (2013) address the phenomena of loyalty and patriotism as manifested in arts/sports and the familial state, respectively. In so doing, they indicate that emotions are neither inherently bad nor good but rather embody both extremes at all times through their relations. Likewise, D. C. Kang (2012) demonstrates how hatred in the form of domestic anti-Americanism is not only top-down but also has its own dynamic among the local population. This illustrates how such ‘negative’ emotions may merit matters such as social cohesion (see eg Kwon 2010). At the same time, however, similar research by Young (2020) on emotional warfare subscribes to the aforementioned binary of good and bad emotions.

Given the overall scarcity of research on emotions related to North Korea, the literature review of this case study cannot be structured according to the contributions of Wuxing to scholarship on the role of emotions in conflict resolution. Instead, the contributions of Wuxing and their value for a better understanding of the conflict related to North Korea should be contrasted with the more general scholarship on North Korea.

The first characteristic of extant ‘North Korea cum conflict’ scholarship concerns not only a particular research question but also academia in this field in its near entirety: the academic predilection for actors/actions as opposed to relations. To name a few examples, such is seen in Kang’s (2012) emphasis on individuals and their sufferings from the Kim regime’s harsh domestic policies; Bleiker’s (2003) critical engagement with Washington’s active stigmatisation of North Korea and its effect on prospects of conflict resolution given the behaviour and foreign policies it enables; or Kim’s (2010) linking of Washington’s war-hawks with Pyongyang’s rather undiplomatic (re)actions.

All such scholarships make valuable contributions. However, how can one make sense of the conflict related to North Korea when standing before a myriad of analyses? How is one to weigh the importance between, for instance, Young’s focus on governments’ narratives and their use of fear and hatred, and Haggard and Noland’s focus on North Korea’s domestic problems? Scholars have focused on some variables and actors while neglecting others. Such research resembles the surgical precision used to operate on a singled-out part of a holistically sick system.

In essence, existing research on conflict related to North Korea in its sum perceives the conflict to be the result of somebody’s fault/actions – which would consequently necessitate the cessation of such an action to end the conflict. Such actio–reactio logic is omnipresent in the North Korea scholarship, as in Kang’s focus on sanctions and Pyongyang’s reaction of shifting the sanction cost onto its citizens; or the rather novel focus on status matters and how Washington’s actions lead to hostile reactions from Pyongyang (2012; see also Hagström and Lundström [2019] or Yamamoto [2019]).

On the other hand, Wuxing conceptualises conflict as an imbalance. Rather than a fixed state of being, balance/non-conflict (the term ‘peace’ is deemed controversial here) is a grey area of multiple relationship options inclusive of all actions and actors that are considered part of the corpus (or the air around the body). It is important to note that such a relational approach is undertaken while analysing actors’ actions. Here, however, such actions are understood more holistically as affecting relations (between bodies or between body components) rather than affecting other actors directly by triggering a reaction. In the eyes of Wuxing, actors and actions cannot be isolated from the complex web that forms the multifaceted body politic of the conflict here; while actors influence relations, relations also constitute actors.

A second camp of scholarship on North Korea that highlights the difference between extant research and the contributions of Wuxing is an inquiry into the reasons behind North Korea’s international provocations. Most scholars link Pyongyang’s aggressive international behaviour to the objective of regime survival. In this regard, Byman and Lind (2010) link military power and the show thereof to an appeal to the militarists in Pyongyang, while Kim (2016) undertakes a historiographical analysis of North Korea’s siege mentality and connects its path-dependent ideologies to the stability of governance. Although focusing on the same question, other papers, such as one by Yamamoto (2019), are more socio-psychological and explain the matter of regime survival through role pressure and role expectations, such as Kim’s role as a near-divine leader (see also Cha 2016; Shin and Moon 2018).

This academic consensus concerning the link between North Korea’s aggressive foreign policy and regime survival in the form of its ontological security signifies the isolation and simplification of the investigated phenomena. Here, causal primacy regarding the conflict is attributed to ontological security with a singled-out remedy in the form of one actor’s actions (Washington) and merely the expressed emotions between the respective parties. Wuxing, on the other hand, embodies a more holistic approach inclusive of other actors, their relations to each other, and their contributions to a problematique deeper than that of ontological security – the weak political body of North Korea. Accordingly, even if no ontological security threat from Washington vis-a-vis the Kim regime existed, the North Korean body might still be considered weak and disharmonious with itself and its surroundings, given the suffering of its people or its weak and overly inhibited economy, as indicated by Wuxing’s account on Qi and disproportionally suppressed emotions. Likewise, even if an ontological security threat were to persist concerning the US–North Korean relationship, a strong political body would be less susceptible to emotional stressors and thus overreactions.

A third manner of assembling scholarship on the Korean conflict is by investigating the focus and wording of scholars, as the narration of the problem usually determines one’s analytical direction. For instance, several authors define the ‘North Korea’ problem in humanitarian terms; these scholars tend to focus on the limited political freedoms and related economic development (Lankov and Kim 2008; Gray and Lee 2017; Choi 2017; etc.). Others define it as a nuclear crisis and focus on diplomacy, international actors, and their tangible and less tangible measures such as military threats or securitisation techniques (eg Park 2010; Kodama 2021). Here, one again stands before the task of weighing the analytical foci. Is the nature of the conflict economic, humanitarian or diplomatic, or is the conflict related to all of these, as noted by Haggard and Noland (2010)? Or is it another conflict altogether, concerning the narration and framing of actors involved (Bleiker 2003; Lim and Seo 2009; Rich 2014; Choi 2015)?

Parallels can be drawn between the above foci and Wuxing whereby, as stipulated in the theory section, the economy and the people constitute part of the body. In addition, the framing and narration of actors resemble pathogens/toxic air and moods. However, mainstream scholarship views body parts in isolation and conceptualises phenomena as either good or bad. Wuxing, in contrast, would necessitate a holistic consideration whereby conflict is defined neither as a nuclear threat nor a humanitarian disaster but in terms of imbalanced relationships determined by these and other elements. This shall be done in this section by analysing the Korean relational imbalance. This analytical section is divided into two sub-sections: diagnosing and treating the problem/imbalance.

Diagnosis: the body

Viewed in terms of East Asian medicine, this paper considers the two Koreas to constitute two separate but related bodies. The definition of the body subsequently determines what is regarded as part of the body/system, what is an external pathogen, and whether suppressed emotions have a destabilising impact on the body or whether they are part of another body.

Concerning the North Korean body, in addition to the imbalanced relations and disproportionately expressed emotions (as will be subsequently addressed), its body is deemed weak and thus particularly susceptible to emotional distress. Informed by Wuxing’s focus on the health of a body’s organs and the interrelationship between them (as well as the outside), the organic weakness of the North Korean body may be said to be a centrally planned and mismanaged economy with its unbalanced investments at the expense of more human-­centred areas; and the people, along with their political limitations, restricted movement, and widespread health problems. Through such weaknesses, not only is the North Korean body more vulnerable to emotional distress, but its emotional reactions are also likely to be more intense and sudden. This sick North Korean body is perceived to be in a social realm consisting of several relationships, each different in nature. For instance, US–North Korea relations bear face-saving elements, while North–South relations are more familial and involve social comparisons. Both relations involve emotions at work that lead to tension and affect internal health and balance.

As discussed in this paper’s theoretical section, emotions themselves – whether referred to as good or bad – are not indicative of a conflict or imbalance. Rather, it is the excess or deficit of emotions that indicate disharmonious relationships. One can see that social roles desired by the Kim regime (equal international footing and domestic reverence) and those attributed to it, eg by Washington (the role of a political menace and regime in need of corrections) are mismatches that lead to disproportionate (re-)actions (see eg Yamamoto 2019). This highlights the importance of social relations between the body and its pathogenic environment and their disproportionate emotions.

Diagnosis: internal pathogens

One would do well not to equate internal balance with the satisfaction of the Kim regime – one organ of the body. The Kim regime itself keeps the people of North Korea hostage through its authoritarian rule to remain in power by perpetuating a parasitic and predatory relationship with its citizens whereby the activities and interactions of its citizens with each other and with, for instance, their South Korean counterparts is restricted (akin to disruptions in the flow of Qi – see Lee [2021]).

Two elements can be discerned concerning inward-oriented emotions in North Korea influenced by pathogens. The first refers to suppressed emotions – the concealing of the so-called pure heart (chinsim) – and the display of artificial emotions – the so-called public face (ongjogin olgu) (Jung 2013). According to Wuxing, such a restricted and unnatural flow of Qi in the form of emotions leads to disease given the imbalanced relations between the North Korean citizens and the Kim regime, fellow North Koreans, South Koreans or people in other regions more generally. This links to freedoms of expression and even movement – both internationally and locally, as citizens can only travel to other regions with a special permit. This geographical inhibitor adds another layer to expressing emotions: controlling who is allowed to interact with whom (see also Gustafsson and Hall 2021).

The second element concerning conscious interference with the free flow of emotions by pathogens is the active control of information and misinformation to prevent emotions such as jealousy, desire and anger with the government from manifesting. Domestically, the Kim regime instils fear (for their lives) and hatred (vis-à-vis the regime’s enemies) among its citizens via propaganda to consolidate its authoritarian rule. Such are the products of the aforenoted predatory relationship between the Kim regime and the citizens, based on the emotion of fear of a regime collapse. One example of such an emotion projection is Pyongyang’s framing of Japan’s military training exercises as ‘preparations for reinvasion and to take the first step for overseas expansion’ (Dprktoday.com 2021).

Notably, it is not the Kim regime per se that hinders reconciliation, but rather the nature of its relationships. This is indicated by the inter-citizen exchanges that have taken place between the North and the South, such as during sporting events where ‘Koreans’ united under one flag (BBC 2018). While scarce, it is a case in point that even with the current Kim regime in place, reconciliation and social exchange beyond a mere political level, and thus a more balanced flow of political Qi, is indeed possible (Lee 2021).

Diagnosis: external pathogens

Concerning external pathogens, it is important to bear in mind North Korea’s rather strong face culture as concerns of international and domestic status considerably influence its foreign policies (Cha 2013). Zhang (2007, 54) stresses that individuals with a strong face are more prone to expressing excessive emotions. Similarly, while the regime has a firm grip on its domestic media, insults and disrespect from outside cannot entirely escape the North Korean elites’ attention. To maintain its rule, the Kim regime is overly sensitive concerning its face, which is inwardly oriented, as its ontological threat is likely to stem from those challenging its authority from within (Yamamoto 2019).

North Korea is organised around the principle of Juche and its emphasis on strength and independence (Kim 2016). As such, the Kim regime is under pressure to protect its face through a show of strength – particularly in times of US provocations such as President Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ remarks labelling North Korea as a rogue state. Bush moreover inhibited the diplomatic progress of South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung under his rapprochement-centred Sunshine Policy, resulting in a failed meeting between the two Korean heads of state in 2001 (Cumings 2005). Bush not only inhibited rapprochement between Clinton and Kim Jong-Il but also ‘filled the air’ with insults and accusations, thereby impacting the meeting between the leaders of South and North Korea (Cumings 2005).

Concerning the Obama administration as another case in point for the United States’ pathogenic role, its policies have not only led to a weakening of North Korean ‘organs’ (eg the economy) but also generated negative diplomatic exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang (inhibiting the flow of Qi). Obama’s North Korea policy of strategic patience engaged in multilateral coercive diplomacy through economic sanctions and by coordinating policies of resolve with Seoul and Tokyo. This harmed the already broken North Korean economy/body and facilitated the armament of the region. Such undertakings, in the eyes of the North, confirmed the need for a survival guarantee in the form of nuclear weapons (Cumings 2020).

Expressed in terms of Wuxing and borrowing from its analogy that fear (water) generates anger (wood), the Kim regime’s worries led it to engage in self-treatment through an aggressive foreign policy in the form of provocations such as its first nuclear test. According to Wuxing, such an undertaking is considered a viable remedy (wood/anger helps solve earth/pensiveness and worry); however, Pyongyang’s countering of its worry with anger turned out to be self-defeating in this case. This brings the proportionality factor back into focus, implying that Pyongyang’s reaction was disproportionate. Such a deduction responds to the aforementioned extant scholarship on emotions in IR, which conceptualises emotions as either good or bad. A view of the sanctions and provocations from this perspective would lead to the highly simplified stigmatisation of North Korea as belligerent and dangerous. This would prohibit consideration of policy options from the stance of the United States beyond the binary of sanctions and cooperation.

Concerning emotions in the United States, Lim and Seo (2009) note that the United States government and the media have produced images of North Korea that have altered public support for foreign policy choices such as those between military or economic sanctions. Such public opinions are influenced by emotions ranging from fear to anger and hatred. This shows how the restricted and selective flow of information (akin to inhibited Qi) facilitated the targeted emotions and thereby created a toxic social atmosphere within which relations with North Korea’s body took place and which contributed to rendering the latter unhealthy.

Similarly, one may also consider South Korean entities such as its civil society a pathogen contributor, as it has, for instance, undertaken campaigns to send across the North Korean border a large number of balloons with media drives containing data such as South Korean dramas. Pyongyang considers this a provocation and threat, and it has engaged in retaliatory measures such as destroying the joint liaison office (BBC 2020). Such undertakings prove to be inflammatory regarding inter-Korean détente, as it indicates disrespect from the South – from Kim Il-Sung’s son.⁵ Here, Pyongyang’s conscious interference with the free flow of emotions is highlighted through cases such as the weakening of its relations with Seoul through the suspension of all dialogue and communication lines in 2020 to prevent South Korean activists from sending information with anti-Pyongyang propaganda across the border (South China Morning Post 2020). The Kim regime replied through the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), stating that the government in Seoul had ‘aroused our dismay’, indicating the referral to emotions such as anger and shock, which was shortly followed by the (arguably impulsive and disproportionate) destruction of the joint liaison office building by the North (South China Moorning Post 2020). This also links the control of information and the creation of a toxic environment.

Treatment: emotions and counter-emotions

As this Korean conflict is defined as imbalance, the proposed treatment aims to reform disharmonious relationships by healing emotional imbalance with counter-emotions, strengthening the body, and detoxifying the pathogenic environment in which diplomacy occurs.

The first treatment concerns the use of counter-emotions. Wuxing would advise approaching North Korea’s excessively aggressive emotions with the counter-emotion of grief and sadness. The reason for such grief might be rather apparent, namely North Korea’s generally undernourished population, and it may even seem absurd to consider that Kim Jong-Un himself might radically shift his policies and care for his population. However, considering his byungjin policy (the simultaneous development of nuclear technology and the economy), a complete disregard for his people appears unlikely. Insights from Wuxing would highlight the need to grant the Kim regime the luxury of worrying about things other than its physical and ontological security. This presents another incentive not to react to the North’s excessive anger with equally angry foreign policy responses but instead through balance-aimed placation directed at enabling grief and sadness, and more acceptable levels of anger. Challenges such as the global pandemic present an interesting opportunity for Pyongyang’s elites, its citizens, and actors in the South to turn their US-focused antagonism into compassion for their fellow beings (Park 2020).

Another approach is to focus on Pyongyang’s fear rather than anger. Diagnosing the regime in North Korea as suffering from excessive fear of a regime collapse, pensiveness/thinking could be proposed as an emotional remedy. While ‘fear’ (water) in this context could refer to the Kim regime’s ontological insecurity, the controlling sequence of Wuxing would assign pensiveness (earth) as a remedy. As emotions are merely one of the possible interpretations of the five phases, ‘earth’ also includes the themes of ‘human’, ‘centre’ and ‘transformation’ (Maciocia 2015, 26). This inspires a focus on higher living standards among the citizens, which would positively impact the Kim regime’s ontological fear by consolidating its positive leadership attributes among its people.

Yet another possible interpretation of the emotional imbalance on the peninsula is that the Kim regime suffers from excessive joy (fire) (in the form of its overindulgence in power). The prescribed remedy would be an increase in fear (water). Such an understanding would support the tightening of sanctions and other forms of pressure vis-à-vis the Kim regime. However, here too, the proportionality factor needs to be observed. It is indeed an art to induce pressure without encouraging one’s counterpart to arm themselves further.

The last interpretation of the emotional imbalance present in North Korea is to diagnose North Korea (not the Kim regime) with excessive sadness (metal) (other themes addressed by the element of metal are harvest, dryness and crying, surprisingly fitting considering the famines in North Korea [Maciocia 2015, 26]). In this case, Wuxing would remedy this emotional imbalance with an increase in joy (fire) (which also includes the theme of ‘growth’; Maciocia 2015). This interpretation stresses the need for development, economic growth and agricultural production.

Treatment: strengthening the body

The second treatment proposed here is the strengthening of the body. North Korea’s internal organs (eg its economy) could be strengthened by lifting sanctions (particularly as anger should not be met with even more anger according to East Asian medicine’s insights), as well as by additional measures such as the re-opening of the Kaesong industrial complex – a bilateral special economic zone. Such measures would not only be conducive to Kim’s face but would also stabilise the North Korean economy and enable a modest degree of interaction between citizens of the North and South. While one might arguably criticise this appeasement by asserting that Pyongyang would use the additional influx of foreign currency for purely military purposes, in the eyes of Wuxing, this would be the case only as long as the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea’s (DP RK) expressed emotional manifestation is that of excessive anger.

The strengthening of North Korea (by strengthening its Qi) has two objectives: first, the enabling of relations between a wide range of actors in both South and North Korea; and, second, a greater resilience of the North vis-à-vis external pathogens such as the United States. Regarding the first point, greater interaction would disarm the negative stereotypes that both countries’ citizens have about each other (Myers et al. 2013). Economic growth might improve the living standards of the citizens of the North, which is likely to reduce the ontological insecurity of the Kim regime and, thus, its military provocations. Research indicates that negative stereotypes in South Korea about people in the North disappear swiftly in the case of a decrease in military threat (Chang and Kang 2020). Concerning the second point, a regime’s internally strengthened ontological security could decrease or obviate the need for the Kim regime to respond in a face-saving manner to external provocations.

Treatment: the pathogens

One last remedy concerns the pathogens involved in the strained relations with and in North Korea. As discussed earlier, the major external pathogen is the United States, which has exerted disproportional pressure on the Kim regime that made the latter feel increasingly compelled to develop its nuclear weapons to guarantee its survival.

The partially self-inflicted isolation of North Korea, facilitated by Juche’s values of strength, self-reliance and independence from external influences (Lee 2014), signifies the desire of the Kim regime to shut itself off from external pathogens in the form of ontological security threats. However, Juche failed to block the poisonous air generated by the pathogens. Moreover, the blocking of movement and prevention of the natural formation of relations both with and within North Korea has merely inhibited the flow of Qi and additionally destabilised the North Korean body and its relations.

Instead of isolating oneself, pathogens can be expelled or tamed. Expelling the United States from the Korean peninsula is not realistic, and ‘taming’ will have to come from within Washington in the form of a political will to forgo disproportionate insulting rhetoric, military provocations and sanctions. The discussion hitherto has demonstrated that the issue at hand cannot be viewed through various individual narrow lenses without a holistic link between them. One remedy concerning pathogens such as Washington would indeed include the practice of lower degrees of Orientalising North Korea (Yamamoto 2019; Hagström and Lundström 2019). This, however, would contribute only marginally to the healing and balance of the North Korean body, as it would neglect or even strengthen the damaged parasitic relations inside North Korea, neglect the competitive relationship between the North and the South, or ignore the control and suppression of information and thus the emotions embodied within these relations. Therefore, the remedies presented here are best considered in tandem rather than in isolation.

As can be discerned, various remedies exist concerning the Korean peninsula, some of which might even oppose each other. This dilemma is not uncommon in East Asian medicine, as one disease can have several potential imbalance constellations. The identification of the right treatment along with the proper proportionality is commonly based on trial and error (Kaptchuk 2000). The prevailing treatment of the Korea problematique in the form of United Nations sanctions has been harming the North Korean people, less so harming Pyongyang’s elites. Therefore, they failed to pass the test of proportionality. Wuxing-based alternatives are therefore worthy of consideration.

Conclusion

This study has provided an alternative angle to understanding the conflict on the Korean peninsula, and conflict more generally, using a novel account of the role of emotions in the field of conflict resolution. It did so by applying insights from the traditional East Asian medical concept of Wuxing to North Korea and its relations. Several inspirations have been drawn from Wuxing for the realms of conflict resolution and international relations in general. These include a reconceptualisation of emotions and policy responses as neither good nor bad, but rather as in excess or in deficit; the understanding that emotions such as fear or hatred might be simultaneously destructive for some relations and constructive for others; the inclusion of suppressed emotions in one’s analysis, considering the balance-disturbing force of parasitic relations; and a consideration of the proportionality of actions and reactions necessitating a focus on relations rather than the dogmatic prescription of how an actor ought to behave.

Based on insights from Wuxing, North Korea’s strained relations with both domestic and international stakeholders have been diagnosed as suffering from relationalities with counterproductive pathogenic actors, a weak corpus that is susceptible to external distress, and a range of excessively expressed and suppressed emotions leading to an imbalance and, thus, disease and conflict. The proposed remedies include taming de-stabilising pathogens such as the United States and Pyongyang, strengthening the North Korean economy to generate resilience vis-à-vis destabilising stressors such as famines, and counterbalancing disproportionately suppressed and expressed emotions with counter-emotions.

Dominant IR scholarship usually tends to rely on visible and measurable variables and isolated treatments of variables. These usually conceptualise emotions as categorically good or bad for a conflict, or focus extensively on actors and entities rather than on relations between them and their stabilising or destabilising effects on the conflict at hand. Aiming to explain and suggest treatment for problems on the Korean peninsula through Wuxing, this paper has demonstrated that Wuxing offers a feasible alternative and complementing insights to extant mainstream IR scholarship.

Acknowledgements

I thank the anonymous reviewers and the members of the Political Healing Workshop at Ryukoku University’s Afrasia Research Centre (now the Global Affairs Research Center – GARC) for their remarks on the presentation of an earlier draft of this paper. My particular gratitude goes to Dr Ching-Chang Chen, Dr Jungmin Seo and Dr Astrid Nordin for the time and energy they dedicated to reading my manuscript in depth and for their invaluable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under Grant 17KK0056.

Notes on contributors

Andrei Yamamoto

Andrei Yamamoto is a research fellow at Ryukoku University’s Global Affairs Research Center and an adjunct lecturer at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan. He does research in international relations meta-theory and political philosophy. His most recent publication is ‘Critical Human Security Studies and the Emancipation from Stress: The UN in Cambodia (1991–1993)’. His current research project is a discourse analysis of Japan’s human security narratives.

Notes

1 While many scholars would likely highlight the impossibility of knowing non-expressed emotions, such remarks would usually stem from the academic norm of inductive reasoning via observations. East Asian medicine, on the other hand, relies on philosophical deduction by referring to concepts such as systemic balance and harmony. Interestingly, however, ‘non-­expression through suppression’ becomes observable through respective power relations between bodies and their components. Such is demonstrated in the case study on North Korea.

2 In this paper, a slightly positivist interpretation of East Asian medicine is deemed useful to bridge extant scholarship. This results in potentially forgoing a high degree of subtlety ­concerning the interrelationship between several components of Wuxing – social matters as well as their relationship to internal components. The latter particularly suffer from lacking translatability but inspire nonetheless.

3 Water (fear) controls fire (joy), which controls metal (sadness), which controls wood (anger), which controls earth (pensiveness), which controls water.

4 The balance–imbalance dualism is not equivalent to the good–bad dualism argued against in this paper. Instead, resonating with Foucault’s ‘regimes of power’, where power is not possessed by any one actor but is inherent in the system and its relationships, all body components can be actively involved. As such, the domination of one component over another is not necessarily ‘bad’ as long as the political infrastructure for emancipated participation is given. If such emancipation is inhibited by one organ’s enforced parasitic relationship, imbalance is facilitated. This can be linked to the flow of Qi, whereby the less this flow is inhibited, the more emancipated the actors in this system are.

5 See Myers (2011) for how Pyongyang refers to it as ‘south’ Korea or the North’s equal brother; see also any Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) article – for instance KCNA (2020a, 2020b).