Collected Essays 4: The Meaning of Geopolitics

By Kim Dong-ryul · Original publication: December 23, 2024

English translation · Original: https://gujoron.com/xe/notice/1664550

Geopolitics is Gujoron applied to reality. Everyone votes geopolitically when they enter a polling station. What is called “voting against one's class interests” is geopolitical voting. Political inclinations are determined by geopolitical reasons. “Progressive” and “conservative” are labels attached afterward; the substance is social geopolitics.

It began with the School of Diplomacy in ancient China. Su Qin's vertical alliances and Zhang Yi's horizontal alliances are famous. Instead of escaping into abstract ideas, they sought answers in physical reality: seeking truth from facts. Han Feizi was another master of geopolitics. Nature confines people with mountains and seas; the Legalists confine them with laws. This connects with Gujoron.

Fan Ju, chancellor of Qin, advocated befriending distant Qi and attacking nearby Wei: “ally with distant states and attack nearby ones.” Bismarck was also a master of geopolitics, befriending distant Russia and attacking nearby France. Connect with a distant great power, trap a nearby smaller power in a funnel, and squeeze it.

Korea should befriend the distant great powers—the United States, Russia, and China—and pressure the nearby smaller powers, Japan and North Korea. Gyeongsang seeks to join hands with distant, powerful Japan and isolate nearby, smaller Jeolla. Jeolla, conversely, seeks to join hands with distant, powerful China and isolate nearby, smaller Gyeongsang.

Gujoron is instinctive. Each side pushes the other into a funnel. Without being told, people practice geopolitics and the strategy of distant alliances and nearby attacks at the polls. Without instruction, Honam, Chungcheong, and the capital region form a vertical alliance to isolate Yeongnam.

In the early days of the internet, associations appeared in many industries. Each had one dominant player, and that player stayed out. Form a smartphone association and Apple stays out; a portal association and Google stays out; a video association and YouTube stays out.

If the others form an association to denounce the dominant player's monopoly, that is Su Qin's vertical alliance. If the dominant player divides them and breaks the alliance, that is Zhang Yi's horizontal alliance. Bill Gates joins hands with Steve Jobs to avoid a monopoly. Such structures of checks and balances appear widely.

Do you say you do not understand Gujoron? You already practice it. Geopolitics is easy to understand because its results are obvious: success and failure are clear. Everyone becomes a master at the polls. Both the Democratic Party and the People Power Party gained power through geopolitics. Another name for it is regionalism.

The same applies to Manifest Destiny, which promoted American expansion. Look at a map and you want to go west. You see the other's weakness: Mexico's capital is too far south; the territory Russia acquired in the West is too far from Russia. Cut off the tail and take it. The temptation becomes irresistible.

Gujoron is the geopolitics of energy. Energy manifests in physical structures. Mountain ranges, rivers, cities, and seas are physical structures. Even a confined dog tries to escape. Every country wants a port through which it can get out. Bolivia fought Chile, lost its ports, and became impoverished.

Energy has inertia. Once inertia sets a direction, a wrong first step sends you sliding further. Arrange your own beginning well to make progress easy; induce your opponent to begin badly and struggle. Japan cut off the Korean diplomatic missions and obstructed Western ships from reaching Joseon.

Take the wrong first step and you become a deer pursued by wolves, repeating wrong decisions even while knowing they are wrong. Geopolitics uses energy's restoring force and inertia. The drive always to oppose the other side is restoring force; the drive always to continue along the same path is inertia.

Social geopolitics means acting because of physical structure, rather than for moral or logical reasons. It exists in class, sex, skin color, education, generational differences, and religion. Class, sex, skin color, education, religion, and age become mountain ranges and seas.

Within those structures, people busily form and break alliances, befriend distant forces, and attack nearby ones. Everyone tries to secure the advantageous position first. Why do Honam and Yeongnam vote differently? Why do women in their twenties participate while men in their twenties stay out? Geopolitical structure decides.

Countries with unfavorable geopolitical structures are poor. Spread out a map and you can see why a country has little choice but to be poor. Failure to understand this may reflect a lack of intelligence. South America is disadvantaged by its distance from Europe. It cannot create its own capital of decision-making.

Landlocked countries are poor. Many Central Asian countries end in “-stan.” A port becomes the head; the interior becomes the tail. Without a port, head and tail cannot be distinguished, so everyone tries to become the head and deadlock follows. Mongolia has abundant resources but, lacking a port, is at China's mercy.

Countries with inland capitals are frustrating. Madrid, Tehran, Ankara, Brasília, and Mexico City are inland. It is like Gung Ye placing his capital in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province. Warsaw and Moscow are inland too, which is unfavorable.

Russia did well when it moved its capital to Petrograd. Warsaw and Moscow reflect an intention to control provincial feudal lords. Surveillance from the center creates a structure unable to expand outward. Pursuing balance produces internal deadlock, so no region can move ahead.

When the capital is near a port, it develops first, and no other region blocks its development. With an inland capital, the port develops first and other regions restrain it. When Barcelona advances, neighboring Valencia invokes regionalism to interfere.

An inland capital encourages a perverse outlook. Consider the Ming problem of “northern barbarians and southern Japanese pirates.” Even when pirates attack, no countermeasure is taken: simply do not live by the sea. Influenced by this thinking, Joseon emptied Ulleungdo and waited for the pirates to exhaust themselves and leave.

The Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars were distant provincial matters, so Empress Dowager Cixi in Beijing paid little attention. They would soon exhaust themselves and quiet down. Only after the foreign powers sacked Beijing did the error become clear, too late. Energy has direction. A badly placed capital distorts it.

Are you in attack mode or defense mode? You can win by performing well or by obstructing your opponent. To perform well, you must act and move outward. But with an inland capital, you cannot get out. Instead, you must stop anyone from connecting with the outside.

An inland capital holds the provinces back so that none moves ahead first. It obstructs Barcelona under the pretext of balanced development. This is why the Catalan independence movement arises. It is the “Philippine disease”: everyone studies how to hold everyone else back, trapped in a funnel leading to failure.

Geopolitics is strategy. Gujoron is strategy. In Go, the opening arrangement is strategy. It builds mountains and rivers on the board. Create an advantageous structure, occupy the terrain, then strike the enemy. Poetry has the structure of rhyme, novels the structure of characters. Music and painting have structures too.

Build the framework first; fill it with content afterward. A Go maxim says that living in all four corners and connecting through the center ensures victory. Consolidate your position, then probe your opponent's weakness. But masters change direction quickly. AlphaGo penetrates the center before its own bases are fully consolidated.

A genius defines the self on a larger scale. An ordinary, narrow person expands from cultivating the self to ordering the family, governing the state, and bringing peace to the world. A genius defines the world as the self from the beginning. Most start in the board's corners; AlphaGo boldly enters the center. The area defined as “me” differs, but energy's direction is the same.

The direction can be confusing. From my own viewpoint, it is inside → outside. From the board's viewpoint, it is outside → inside. Connect the four corners to create an outside, then penetrate inward. A petty person first builds their own house and then tears down another's. A noble person first builds a shared house and then dismantles individual houses.

Petty person: from my inside to the outside. Strengthen myself first, then attack the other.

Noble person: from the outside of the whole field inward. Connect the whole that includes both you and me, then compress its parts.

Their directions appear different but are actually the same. Energy moves from outside to inside. The distinction is whether “outside” is judged relative to me or to the whole field: using the entire field or only our half. Thinking solely from your own position merely describes yourself.

The difference between progressives and conservatives is the territory they define as “me”: the whole world or only their family. It is a difference in design, not ideology. “Progressive” and “conservative” are labels added afterward. What exists is grand strategy and small-scale tactics—the difference between a large corporation and a corner shop.

India and Pakistan began in similar circumstances. Pakistan had overwhelming advantages: a smaller population and a shared religion. Yet India, with its vast population and religious and caste divisions, caught up. Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, is inland. Pakistan has even fallen behind Bangladesh, once synonymous with poverty.