February 19, 2026

The Bond That Happens To You

A few weeks ago, we were invited to speak virtually at a Korean coaching conference about human flourishing. We explored how the words a culture has for an experience don't just describe it, but shape it from the inside.

While preparing for the session, I discovered a Korean emotion word that I think you will find fascinating:

The word is 정 (jeong). 

It's a concept that has shaped how we've been thinking about our Seeds of Flourishing event series this spring (details below) and it feels like the right place to begin.

Nicolò & Jim from the Centre for Human Flourishing being broadcasted during the ICF-Converge event in Seoul

The bond that chooses you

Jeong is the Korean word for the deep, involuntary connectedness that accumulates between people through shared time, proximity, and experience. Even between people who actively dislike each other.

It is not quite love, affection, or attachment. It is all of these and none of them. Jeong names something Western languages have no single word for: the felt, bodily, relational glue that holds human beings together not by choice but by the slow alchemy of shared life.

Korean language itself reveals jeong's architecture. The verb 정들다 (jeong-deul-da), “to develop jeong”, uses the passive structure: jeong enters, jeong permeates. You don't choose jeong. The standard expression is 정이 들었어 (jeong-i deureosseo):  "jeong has entered me." The person is the recipient, not the agent. 

Jeong resists translation because it names a unified field where English sees only fragments. Western languages separate love, affection, attachment, loyalty, compassion, empathy, and nostalgia into distinct categories. Jeong holds them together as aspects of a single relational phenomenon. It is simultaneously a feeling, a practice, a cultural norm, and a claim about the nature of human interconnectedness.

Jeong is not a flash of feeling. The expression 정을 쌓다 (jeong-eul ssat-da),  "to stack up jeong", captures its sedimentary nature. Layer by layer, through sharing ordinary moments, jeong builds. You cannot rush it. You cannot manufacture it. You can only create conditions and wait. It is much like preparing kimchi, whose flavor grows richer and more complex through slow fermentation.

A paradox at the heart of it

A remarkable feature of jeong is 미운 정 (miun jeong), literally "hate-jeong." This is the deep bond that forms even between people who actively dislike each other. Think about a husband and a wife in a complicated relationship. A mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who clash constantly. Longtime workplace rivals. A prisoner and the guard that serves them food. When enough time and proximity accumulate, jeong… enters. Unbidden, unwanted, undeniable.

The paired expression 미운 정 고운 정 다 들었다 (miun jeong goun jeong da deureotda), "I've developed both hate-jeong and beautiful-jeong", is roughly the equivalent to: I've been through thick and thin with this person. It acknowledges that the deepest bonds are not purely positive. They include irritation, friction, even resentment, and yet something beneath all that holds.

Theologian Wonhee Anne Joh explains it like that: jeong "not only smooths harsh feelings, such as dislike or even hate, but has a way of making relationships richly complex by moving away from a binary, oppositional perception of reality". When jeong is present, a person might appear as an "enemy", but one-to-one, the relationship could be colored with compassion, recognition, and even acceptance and eventual forgiveness. Jeong resists the binary. It holds contradiction without resolving it.

However, when jeong is violated or betrayed, it produces 한 (han): a profound, suppressed anguish unique to Korean experience. As psychiatrists Chung and Cho write: "The warmer and more tender the jeong-based relationship, the more bitter and profound the agony of han which arises when jeong is broken". And the word for tearing away from someone you have jeong with, 정을 떼다 (jeong-eul tteda), literally means "to rip jeong off," conveying that separation is not a clean break but a tearing of tissue.

What jeong reveals about flourishing

At the Centre for Human Flourishing, we frame flourishing not as a destination but as something that emerges, like a wildflower that arises from the interaction of roots, soil microorganisms, and light. No single element produces it. It is the quality of the whole system when conditions are right.

Jeong describes a similar process between people.

It does not arise because we decided to connect. It arises because we showed up, repeatedly, imperfectly, in the same space, and something accumulated. 

Jeong provokes us to consider how the deepest question about flourishing may not be how do I build the right relationships?, but something like: what am I already connected to that I haven't yet recognized?

This is the kind of question you cannot answer alone, and cannot answer quickly. 

It requires slowing down. 

Turning toward another person.

Being willing to look at what obstructs as well as what shines.

That's exactly the territory Seeds of Flourishing is built for.

Seeds of Flourishing: Eight conversations, one question

This spring, we are launching Seeds of Flourishing: a series of eight biweekly online conversations, running from March through June. Each session brings together a practitioner at the cutting edge of their field and a community of people willing to ask questions that matter. The sessions are participatory, 45-min long and free, with the possibility to make a donation. 

The series is built around a single organizing question:

What does it actually take to thrive?

The first session takes place on March 5th, and it could not be a better place to start.

Bhaskar Goswami, radical transformation mentor, founder of BODHI, born into a traditional yogic lineage in Assam, India, will guide a live, participatory inquiry to help you explore your own embodied understanding of what flourishing means to you, what obstructs it, and what you can do to strengthen it at this moment in your life.

You are still in time to register for the whole series and join us from the very beginning!

We can’t wait to get on this journey with you.

With warmth,

The Centre for Human Flourishing Team

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PS: Curious to learn more about Jeong? Here is a free in-depth scholarly resource to learn more about it across Confucian, Buddhist, feminist and other perspectives.

PSS: Are you into kimchi and social innovation like we are? Here is a recent fascinating article about communal cabbage fermentation as a lens for system change.