2 new TKD forms from the Kukkiwon

[newGuy12]

Hello. I have stumbed across two new forms designed by the Kukkiwon. Here is a youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5cRWdG4spk

Now, I have also seen at least one of our members, who I respect, comment on these forms favourably on some other message board. (The board and the member will go unnamed). I myself think these forms are grand!

Thoughts?

[newGuy12]

Here is another video which shows judges discussing the form, if you are interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtA06JSE9zc

[exile]

nG, thanks very much for posting these.

I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of some of the long-time TKD teachers and experienced practitioners on the forms: why the look the way they do, what their payoffs are in terms of self-defense and so on.

[terryl965]

All I know in the second set of poomsae they had a spinning ridgehand and also a palm strike. I kinda like the ahnd strikes, this is more pacticle for SD reason.

The first form had too many high flying kicks for me but who knows. I will be looking for info. on who brought them to the front of the light and all of the SD pinciples that are involved in them.

[foot2face]

Are they supposed to have a direct, practical SD purpose?

I'm not a 100% certain, but I think I read some where that they were developed solely for form competitions as a metric to judge one's overall technical ability. It kind of makes sense after viewing them. They demonstrate a wide variety of techniques and do not seem as thematically focused as other poomse. It looks to me like they are a showcase for TKD.

[IcemanSK]

Wow, thanks for posting them, Robert. I'd really like to see boon hae on the first one. Any idea on what rank they are supposed to be targeted toward?

[newGuy12]

Wow, thanks for posting them, Robert.

Thank you and others for commenting on them. I am very anxious to learn any information at all about them, particularly from any Instructors or Assistant Instructors.


I'd really like to see boon hae on the first one. Any idea on what rank they are supposed to be targeted toward?

I cannot say much, because I do not know. I did read a post on the web by a man who can speak from a position of knowing. He said that they resemble the motions that are used in sparring, and seem to be technically motivated rather than politically motivated. That is all that I can pass along. Hopefully others will comment.

One other observation (nothing more) about the first one -- it takes quite a bit of room to execute. You cannot perform this in a small space.

The first form is very beautiful to me and pleasing to watch. I wish to try to learn this.

[exile]

All I know in the second set of poomsae they had a spinning ridgehand and also a palm strike. I kinda like the ahnd strikes, this is more pacticle for SD reason.

The first form had too many high flying kicks for me but who knows. I will be looking for info. on who brought them to the front of the light and all of the SD pinciples that are involved in them.


Are they supposed to have a direct, practical SD purpose?

I'm not a 100% certain, but I think I read some where that they were developed solely for form competitions as a metric to judge one's overall technical ability. It kind of makes sense after viewing them. They demonstrate a wide variety of techniques and do not seem as thematically focused as other poomse. It looks to me like they are a showcase for TKD.

Yes to the above, the bolded parts in particular.

If you look at both traditional O/J kata and the KMA derivatives of those kata (the hyungs sets which were formed largely out of recombined elements of the earlier O/J forms, with the Pinans especially prominent), you see a high proportion of hand techs to kicks—and, as Simon O'Neil and others have pointed out, this is also true for the `classic' TKD hyungs, both colored belt such as the Palgwes and the dan level hyung as well. Take Palgwe Pal Jang, the last of the series and part of the Shodan test at our dojang. 35 moves, 3 kicks. More than 90% of the hyung is hand strikes—a lotta elbow and knifehand strikes especially. Or take Tae Bak: 26 moves, 22 of them hand strikes. Or Sipjin: 31 moves, exactly 2, count 'em, two kicks in the whole form—and the most basic ones in the arsenal, plain old front snap kicks. These numbers are typical.

Compare them with the first of the new KKW hyungs, the one that f2f identifies as having been constructed as a showcase for contemporary TKD. I count 72 moves or so, of which 25 are kicks. That's one out of three moves, compared with Sipjin's one out of fifteen, or Palgwe Pal Jang's one out of eleven.

It's pretty clear what message is being sent. Those kinds of numbers don't reflect the kind of CQ techs that violence professionals trained in TMAs identify as the safest, most effective and reliable ones for real-world H2H combat, but they do reflect the overwhelming practice of current competition TKD—which, not coincidentally, the KKW has a big, big stake in, as the technical and curriculum arbiters of the national martial sport of the RoK (which has gotten immense favorable publicity and economic benefits from its place as the home of the Olympic sport that is, for much of the world, the whole story of TKD).

Am I being paranoid in seeing this synthetic hyung, designed as it is for forms competition and based on sparring competition, as the next wave in the KKW's campaign to completely rewrite TKD as a martial sport first and last, and decouple it altogether from its fighting origins in brutal street karate? Is it crazy to envisage that over the next decade or so, forms like Sipjin and the other classic TKD hyungs will be quietly marginalized in favor of nouveau cuisine forms, light on SD content but heavy on presentation, hitting all the right sparring-rules buttons, moving steadily in the direction of the XMA version of TKD performed by Chloe Bruce we saw a few weeks ago here (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=870895)? Can someone convince me, with good sound arguments, that that's not what we're getting a preview of here?

[Laurentkd]

nG, thanks very much for posting these.

I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of some of the long-time TKD teachers and experienced practitioners on the forms: why the look the way they do, what their payoffs are in terms of self-defense and so on.

As soon as I watched the video I knew this post from Exile was coming!http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Laurentkd]

Are they supposed to have a direct, practical SD purpose?

I'm not a 100% certain, but I think I read some where that they were developed solely for form competitions as a metric to judge one's overall technical ability. It kind of makes sense after viewing them. They demonstrate a wide variety of techniques and do not seem as thematically focused as other poomse. It looks to me like they are a showcase for TKD.

I heard awhile back that they were looking at creating new forms for competition's sake only. I just wish they would really standardize a couple of the current black belt forms and use those instead. These definitely look more like flash XMA type forms. I am reminded of open karate forms divisions- a lot of flash with very little "meat" (of course, they always get a huge response from the crowd). If these forms really do catch on I am sure I will learn them just to know them, but as Exile said, they really don't compare with the current forms we already have. Why fix what is not broken?

[exile]

As soon as I watched the video I knew this post from Exile was coming!http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

Ogod, a member for only a little more than a year and already that predictable?? Dang!.... :lol:


...they really don't compare with the current forms we already have. Why fix what is not broken?

It's a world-view thing, I'm guessing. They figure the time has come to make a decisive break with TKD's history and redefine it as a martial sport, pure and simple. Eventually, the art is going to split, the way it did when TSD broke away from what became the KTA. The Olympic stylists will go one way and we'll be on our own... which we sort of are already anyway, really....

[IcemanSK]

Ogod, a member for only a little more than a year and already that predictable?? Dang!.... :lol:



It's a world-view thing, I'm guessing. They figure the time has come to make a decisive break with TKD's history and redefine it as a martial sport, pure and simple. Eventually, the art is going to split, the way it did when TSD broke away from what became the KTA. The Olympic stylists will go one way and we'll be on our own... which we sort of are already anyway, really....

What's that? Oh yeah, it's my gag reflex :barf:

[exile]

Ogod, a member for only a little more than a year and already that predictable?? Dang!.... :lol:



It's a world-view thing, I'm guessing. They figure the time has come to make a decisive break with TKD's history and redefine it as a martial sport, pure and simple. Eventually, the art is going to split, the way it did when TSD broke away from what became the KTA. The Olympic stylists will go one way and we'll be on our own... which we sort of are already anyway, really....

What's that? Oh yeah, it's my gag reflex :barf:

Well, you can't stop.... um... "progress".

Bizarre as it seems, there are folk who actually feel like that. Steve Capener is an excellent TKD historian, really good on what the pre-karate KMA scene in the 19th and early 20th c. was really like, but he would like nothing better than the complete elimination of all TKD links to actual combat. Check out his frequently cited paper here (http://www.bluewavetkd.com/images/GoalSheets/capeneressay.pdf) and you'll see exactly what I mean... for him, it's a cultural imperative that Korea rid itself of what he regards as the alien budo conception of personal-use MAs and instead go on to sportify itself totally. When I first read this last year I thought, no... surely no one actually takes that idea seriously... sport-type dilution, yes, but the combat art won't be rejected totally, right? But after looking at these vids and the Chloe Bruce `demo' ... hyung[??]... I gotta say that, yet again, I was wrong. Those vids are I think the Blue Wave of the future...

[crushing]

Isn't there a saying that goes something like, "You become what others see in you"? That's what I thought of when I saw this new form with its higher percentage of kicks including jumping kicks.

I did see some what looked like it may be wrist grab defenses with counter strikes/throws.

I thought the high side kick under 'tension' may have been more suited towards demonstrations, but upon a little further thought, do you really need to have SD aspects in every technique? What if certain techniques are to show a students commitment to balance, flexibility and concentration? Could those things be nearly as important in becoming a whole student?

[exile]

Isn't there a saying that goes something like, "You become what others see in you"? That's what I thought of when I saw this new form with its higher percentage of kicks including jumping kicks.

I did see some what looked like it may be wrist grab defenses with counter strikes/throws.

I thought the high side kick under 'tension' may have been more suited towards demonstrations, but upon a little further thought, do you really need to have SD aspects in every technique? What if certain techniques are to show a students commitment to balance, flexibility and concentration? Could those things be nearly as important in becoming a whole student?

Sure, but historically, the role of kata/hyungs/hsings has been as compressed mnemonics outlining how the general strategic principles of the art are expressed tactically in differing situations. I train balance very intensely—it declines with age probably faster than strength or even flexibility, so I cannot neglect it—but the best balance exercises I've found aren't hyungs or kata, but drills that specifically target the body-sense that corresponds to physical stability through a range of complex motions. Same for strength, for dexterity... kata weren't designed to `feed' those skills; their goal was to record the SD practice of the masters who created them. And so far as concentration is concerned... yes, definitely; but concentration and focus for what end? You can do forms in a kind of mesmerized, self-hypnotic state, of course, but to me that's not a form of focus that's very useful for MA purposes (though it can be an effective form of meditation—but then, so can a long, perfect ski run or a 5km run). Focus in MA training is surely related to visualization of the context in which the movements being trained will actually be applied, no? And that skill—being able to `see' your opposite number as you perform the kata and picture yourself actually applying the bunkai you've worked out—depends on your having a coherent idea of what the application consists of.

My concern is that TKD forms, under this new `regime', will be reduced to essentially hyung-like demo guidelines. The syntax will be the same, but the semantics will be radically different: there will be no organic functional coherence amongst the techs, which in the karate-based arts has always been imposed by considerations of combat utility and effectiveness—each subsequence of the form representing a highly economical use of motion to disable a violent antagonist. Once that's abandoned, the way is clear for TKD (of that stripe, anyway) to become first XMA-ized, and then eventually to wind up in the same relation to historical MA that modern state-sponsored wushu performances have to the old-time Fukien White Crane or Northern Mantis styles of CMA...

[Laurentkd]

Isn't there a saying that goes something like, "You become what others see in you"? That's what I thought of when I saw this new form with its higher percentage of kicks including jumping kicks.

I did see some what looked like it may be wrist grab defenses with counter strikes/throws.

I thought the high side kick under 'tension' may have been more suited towards demonstrations, but upon a little further thought, do you really need to have SD aspects in every technique? What if certain techniques are to show a students commitment to balance, flexibility and concentration? Could those things be nearly as important in becoming a whole student?


Sure, there are lots of important skills for a martial artist to have, but that doesn't mean they necessarily belong in forms. We don't see any running laps or jump rope in forms to show endurance. We don't do the splits in forms to show static flexibility. We don't kick targets or boards in forms to show accuracy. All these (and more) aspects are important to being a good martial artist, but traditionally that was not the purpose of forms. I guess it is just see the original reasoning behind them be thrown away to be more conducive to competition is what gets me.

**Edit: I should have read Exile's post first. He explains my above section much better than I!**

And I STILL don't understand why our current forms couldn't have been used in higher level competition. All WTF forms are supposed to be standardized and they are definitely not. Why not actually mandate a specific competition standard for current forms and then anyone choosing to compete must alter their forms to match this standard (any master who doesn't have his students compete can of course keep doing them the way he feels is best). I don't know. I guess as long as all TKD forms don't turn in to this new sport style it doesn't really matter if there are a couple of flash in the pan forms out there, but to me it just all seems like a slippery slope.


BEWARE THE SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!!!!

[terryl965]

As to the split that has happened and will continue. My take is simple, if you enjoy competing then complete. If you enjoy Tradition then find tradition, the problem is we have no tradition anymore every single Tom, Dick and Harry does there own thing. In the tKD world every single person has the hidden agenda and association, you rank me I'll rank you and so on and so on. We have lost what once was, to qoute a movie about Kig Authur. Never can it be found because to mant self rightous asses are in control of what once was. I have been doing TKD for half my life, seen it all fake certs., GM never sending certificates over to the Kukkiwon and people never recieving them. The raise of the all mighty McDojaangs and the power they can produce in a city of such naive people.

Training has become a joke, SD principle are being re-invented everyday, Yea right and I'm the pope of the Cathelic Church for God sake. Remember what once was is a phase of people like me old and tired of the politics and seeing new people get some powers and change everything, I will always be a 4th for I feel there is nobody worthy to test me again, all these test are a joke if you pay enough money you have a new rank if you play the game you have a new rank and if you kiss those asses enough you wil be a GM in no time.

Sorry things like this just upsets the living crap out of me and it will continue to do so. I am doomed to see what I love and have devoted my life to be destoyed by money hungry power tripping people that really do not give a damm about the Art or anybody that is evolved in the Arts.

[Laurentkd]

As to the split that has happened and will continue. My take is simple, if you enjoy competing then complete. If you enjoy Tradition then find tradition, the problem is we have no tradition anymore every single Tom, Dick and Harry does there own thing.

I do want to throw in here that I don't see anything wrong with competing. I myself competed nationally in the AAU back in the day and they are some of my best memories of growing up through middle and high school. I love the experiences those gave me. It is just the total flip to ALL competition that worries me, and I guess that is why I have become much more "traditionally minded" in the last few years because I feel like we have to hold on tight to what we have in order to keep it.


Sorry things like this just upsets the living crap out of me and it will continue to do so. I am doomed to see what I love and have devoted my life to be destoyed by money hungry power tripping people that really do not give a damm about the Art or anybody that is evolved in the Arts.

It is so great talking to like minded folks here on MT! Master Stoker, I hope you keep on keeping on, because there are others out there who share your feelings. The thing is, those of us who care about traditional ways are not the ones who are going to be trying to elbow their way into politics, so it almost seems there is no stopping the big organizational swing towards sport. I guess all we can do is keep training and teaching the way we feel we should, and maybe we'll influence enough people to get the pendulum to swing back the other way before too long.

[terryl965]

I do want to throw in here that I don't see anything wrong with competing. I myself competed nationally in the AAU back in the day and they are some of my best memories of growing up through middle and high school. I love the experiences those gave me. It is just the total flip to ALL competition that worries me, and I guess that is why I have become much more "traditionally minded" in the last few years because I feel like we have to hold on tight to what we have in order to keep it.

Laure we compete in AAU and USAT, my son is trying out for the Junior National with both orgs. My wife is the Gold medalist from Last year AAU in Florida. I'm with you about everything having to be about competition what about Tradition, my family will understand the difference but most out in the real world believe the sport side is really a SD in sheep clothing. I hope you are at AAU National this year so we can meet.

[exile]

Sure, there are lots of important skills for a martial artist to have, but that doesn't mean they necessarily belong in forms. We don't see any running laps or jump rope in forms to show endurance. We don't do the splits in forms to show static flexibility.We don't kick targets or boards in forms to show accuracy.All these (and more) aspects are important to being a good martial artist, but traditionally that was not the purpose of forms. I guess it is just see the original reasoning behind them be thrown away to be more conducive to competition is what gets me.

**Edit: I should have read Exile's post first. He explains my above section much better than I!**

Re the stuff in bold: Lauren, c'mon, you put it beautifully. Those are great specific examples that nail down the fundamental idea of what the forms do well and what they do not. Look, for example, at breaking: if you want to train for efficient power delivery to a small area—a vital skill for MA use—breaking is terrific training, but we don't find it in forms, because there are much more effective ways to develop that skill (including dedicated training in breaking) than breaking a board as move 16 of some hypothetical hyung. That's a great point—please don't sell short your own very persuasive way of putting the matter, OK?

I've separated out your examples in color coding because I like the range of cases you cite. They add up to a very nice set of arguments about what hyungs are, and what they aren't, and why we shouldn't mess around with them in the way that the KKW seems be determined to do...



And I STILL don't understand why our current forms couldn't have been used in higher level competition. All WTF forms are supposed to be standardized and they are definitely not. Why not actually mandate a specific competition standard for current forms and then anyone choosing to compete must alter their forms to match this standard (any master who doesn't have his students compete can of course keep doing them the way he feels is best). I don't know. I guess as long as all TKD forms don't turn in to this new sport style it doesn't really matter if there are a couple of flash in the pan forms out there, but to me it just all seems like a slippery slope.


BEWARE THE SLIPPERY SLOPE!!!!!!


That's putting it as well as I think it can be put. And that's what worries me: once this kind of `hyung' becomes legitimized, there is absolutely nothing to keep the technical canon from becoming more and more overloaded with such forms. Even without an official mandate (the way first the Pinans were suppressed, then the Palgwes were marginalized), if these are the kind of forms that lead performers to higher scores, does anyone really think that most competitors will persist in the traditional forms simply because they are traditional and incorporate combat content (content that many of the competitors themselves are unaware of)? Isn't the progressive adaptation of the new KKW canon far more likely? I mean, the judges are going to have the KKW looking over their shoulders at the higher competitive levels... look at the way judging in figure skating has become totally unprincipled and political in nature, for a glimpse into the near future!


As to the split that has happened and will continue.

Yup.


My take is simple, if you enjoy competing then complete. If you enjoy Tradition then find tradition, the problem is we have no tradition anymore every single Tom, Dick and Harry does there own thing. In the TKD world every single person has the hidden agenda and association, you rank me I'll rank you and so on and so on. We have lost what once was, to qoute a movie about King Authur. Never can it be found because to mant self rightous asses are in control of what once was.

Yup again.


I have been doing TKD for half my life, seen it all fake certs., GM never sending certificates over to the Kukkiwon and people never recieving them. The raise of the all mighty McDojaangs and the power they can produce in a city of such naive people.

Training has become a joke, SD principle are being re-invented everyday, Yea right and I'm the pope of the Cathelic Church for God sake. Remember what once was is a phase of people like me old and tired of the politics and seeing new people get some powers and change everything, I will always be a 4th for I feel there is nobody worthy to test me again, all these test are a joke if you pay enough money you have a new rank if you play the game you have a new rank and if you kiss those asses enough you wil be a GM in no time.

Terry, I think this is an inevitable byproduct of massive top-down organizational control taking precedence over the individual school. We all pay lip service to the Kwan era, but the great thing about the Kwan era was that those guys each went his own way, and didn't give up his vision of the right way to do things just to have a bigger piece of the pie. That changed in the late 1950s and set TKD on the road to state control, entanglement in the (frequently corrupt) politics and deal-brokering of the Olympic `movement', and led to a situation in which—as I see it, anyway—considerations of national prestige have led the TKD Central Directorate to dilute the martial content of TKD to the point where you really have to sympathize with all those nasty comments that people make about it on The Site Which Must Not Be Named and elsewhere....

But you know, no matter what happens, we're still gonna be around. The great thing is that this isn't Korea; no matter what the KKW decides, we can determine our own curricula.


Sorry things like this just upsets the living crap out of me and it will continue to do so. I am doomed to see what I love and have devoted my life to be destoyed by money hungry power tripping people that really do not give a damm about the Art or anybody that is evolved in the Arts.

No, it's not going to be destroyed. The WTF/KKW two-step, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, will go their merry way, but my guess is, in North America and the UK, a martial art version of TKD will continue and emerge as a separate component of the KMA universe, in the same way that TSD did. Eventually we may find ourselves—our part of the TKD story—reuniting with the TSDers. That's a private fantasy of mine, but I think the line of development the KKW seems set on pursuing is going to lead to that outcome, sooner or later... but in any case, nothing is going to be destroyed as long as we keep teaching TKD the way we see it and others do the same...

[terryl965]

Great ppoints made by you again exile and I sure do hope TKD stays, even though my family competes we are true TKD'ers in the sese SD and the principle behind them come first.
Thank you as always.

[exile]

Great ppoints made by you again exile and I sure do hope TKD stays, even though my family competes we are true TKD'ers in the sese SD and the principle behind them come first.
Thank you as always.

Terry, it will stay, and again, most definitely, there is nothing wrong with competition, it's an option that many people who are also interested in SD, like you and your family, enjoy and want to pursue in tandem with your combat-oriented training, and it's all good. Preserving the range of options is the name of the game. And thank you, for showing how it's possible, and constructive, to pursue both the budo and the sport side of this art without contradiction. It's a lesson that alas seems to have been lost on the TKD Directorate, but my hope is that it will continue to gain traction in the West....

[terryl965]

Terry, it will stay, and again, most definitely, there is nothing wrong with competition, it's an option that many people who are also interested in SD, like you and your family, enjoy and want to pursue in tandem with your combat-oriented training, and it's all good. Preserving the range of options is the name of the game. And thank you, for showing how it's possible, and constructive, to pursue both the budo and the sport side of this art without contradiction. It's a lesson that alas seems to have been lost on the TKD Directorate, but my hope is that it will continue to gain traction in the West....


Mine too.

[IcemanSK]

I'm not sure if it's been up this way or not, by another by-product of the type of unity that the sport aspect of TKD brings is MONEY. We don't even need to be talking McDojang here. But the fact is, sport ANYTHING is more marketable than traditional side of an activity.

Wrestling only had a small niche in the sport world until MMA came along. In fact, look at BJJ & other such things that exploded when the UFC came on the scene. Tons of folks (male & female would buy a Randy Couture t-shirt because of the exposure of the sport on UFC. If you own a gymnastics center to teach kids how to tumble, it's in your best interest to tap into the Olympic sport side of it in some way to make a buck.

The hard thing that the powers-that-be in TKD don't understand is that MOST folks that get into MA don't do it because they idolize Juan Moreno. As we all know, it's a small group of people who want to live out that TKD dream. A backlash is coming that makes the "TKD stinks cuz they fight with their hands down" crowd look our biggest supporters. People used to say that "TKD is as popular in Korea as baseball is in the USA." Well gang, baseball is getting less popular here every day. My biggest fear is that TKD will simply be ignored as that "overhyped sport" that my kid did when he was is in grade school.

We've got it have a better long term goal than the sport.

[exile]

I'm not sure if it's been up this way or not, by another by-product of the type of unity that the sport aspect of TKD brings is MONEY. We don't even need to be talking McDojang here. But the fact is, sport ANYTHING is more marketable than traditional side of an activity.

Wrestling only had a small niche in the sport world until MMA came along. In fact, look at BJJ & other such things that exploded when the UFC came on the scene. Tons of folks (male & female would buy a Randy Couture t-shirt because of the exposure of the sport on UFC. If you own a gymnastics center to teach kids how to tumble, it's in your best interest to tap into the Olympic sport side of it in some way to make a buck.

The hard thing that the powers-that-be in TKD don't understand is that MOST folks that get into MA don't do it because they idolize Juan Moreno. As we all know, it's a small group of people who want to live out that TKD dream. A backlash is coming that makes the "TKD stinks cuz they fight with their hands down" crowd look our biggest supporters. People used to say that "TKD is as popular in Korea as baseball is in the USA." Well gang, baseball is getting less popular here every day. My biggest fear is that TKD will simply be ignored as that "overhyped sport" that my kid did when he was is in grade school.

We've got it have a better long term goal than the sport.

Absolutely, this is going to happen, and the result in the end may actually be healthy for `old school' TKD. I have the feeling that the first point you raised—the fact that very few TKD participants are actively committed to sport competition—is something the Korean TKD directorate is overlooking, and that they have a very exaggerated idea of their support base. My sense is that that only a very small percentage of TKDers entertain sport ambitions, and that of those who do, the vast majority are kids and maybe some teenagers. As time goes on, the KKW's efforts to define TKD increasingly narrowly, and purge it of its traditional combat content, will meet an increasing resistance of exactly this type—in particular, fewer and fewer people on this side of the Pacific will consider the KKW to be relevant. And as that kind of reaction increases, there will be niches open for schools like yours and Terry's which advocate the full content of TKD.

In the end, I strongly suspect that we in N. America will wind up reverting to a school-based institutional model for TKD, much more like karate, with large top-down sports federations and controlling organizations increasingly marginalized and irrelevant. And if that happens, they have only themselves to blame...

[IcemanSK]

Absolutely, this is going to happen, and the result in the end may actually be healthy for `old school' TKD. I have the feeling that the first point you raised—the fact that very few TKD participants are actively committed to sport competition—is something the Korean TKD directorate is overlooking, and that they have a very exaggerated idea of their support base. My sense is that that only a very small percentage of TKDers entertain sport ambitions, and that of those who do, the vast majority are kids and maybe some teenagers. As time goes on, the KKW's efforts to define TKD increasingly narrowly, and purge it of its traditional combat content, will meet an increasing resistance of exactly this type—in particular, fewer and fewer people on this side of the Pacific will consider the KKW to be relevant. And as that kind of reaction increases, there will be niches open for schools like yours and Terry's which advocate the full content of TKD.

In the end, I strongly suspect that we in N. America will wind up reverting to a school-based institutional model for TKD, much more like karate, with large top-down sports federations and controlling organizations increasingly marginalized and irrelevant. And if that happens, they have only themselves to blame...


It's sad to say that the power-base at the KKW has shifted more toward those with a sport-minded thought process. Yet, GM Uhm, Woon Kyu is still the head of the KKW. He was there when they invented the term "old school Taekwondo." The generation under him are folks like GM Park, Hae Man & GM Lee, Kyu Hyung are also men who have tested TKD in battle & appreciate it as an authentic SD art. Is it the generation after them, or the next gernation where the wheels feel off the wagon?

Yes, I'm ranting. But I want to know who is to blame!!!!:biggun:

[foot2face]

I have no love for the KKW but I do have a deep, profound affection for the fighting system of which they are, unfortunately, the stewards. My master was a big believer in the unified Kwan modern TKD style, but he always kept the WTF at arms length. When ever a newer student would ask “When do we compete in tournaments?” He would reply “Oh no, that’s not what we do here.” Often, after class they would return to the changing room, somewhat disappointed, complaining under their breath of how they are being “jipped” out of a true MA experience. The constant sighing would soon attract the attention of one of the BBs who would sharply query “What do you want; to learn how to fight or how to play a game? The training at my school was hard and geared towards the sole purpose of being able to quickly incapacitate an attacker(s).
That being said, I see nothing wrong with these new forms. The forms contain a multitude of advanced (not uselessly flashy) techniques of the KKW style of TKD and demands the practitioner to execute them on both side. Younger, dedicated BBs should have no problem executing these forms nor should older BBs who have kept in shape. My master was in his late 50s when I last saw him and he could easily perform these poomse, while adding the power that’s lacking in the clips. I have used every technique demonstrated during hard sparring sessions and many of them during real altercations, successfully.
Devotees of traditional kata/hyung frequently comment on how their forms reflect the practical SD applications of their style, until they get to the high kicks and extremely deep stances. Then no, those are simply for exercise purposes, increasing flexibility and strengthening the legs. Surely they would cede that a form might have uses outside bunkai/boon hae. Can’t they see the value in having a single physically demanding form that catalogues many of your systems more advance movements, even if it was unable to due so in a completely practical manner?
Exile, I can understand how you might feel that these poomse are another step towards TKD the martial sport and a huge departure from tradition but I think you are making the same mistake you have made in the past. You fail to recognize that KKW TKD is completely different from what you practice. It’s not just a water down, sports variation of what you do but a wholly distinct fighting system that evolved partly from your style. It resembles your Song Moo Kwan as much as main land Shotokan resembles the CMA from which it evolved. KKW TKD is and amalgamation of various styles and has a lot more uniquely Korean influence than your heavily Japanese inspired system as well as having a good bit of direct CMA influence. Here (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57336) is a link to a video posted by Mr. VanCise, it is an old clip of Kook Sool Won practitioners. Watch the first form they perform in the court yard. Mr. McLain later commented how it’s “very, very similar” to a Chuan-fa form called So Ho Yon. Note the spinning kick, the jumping kick and the jump-spinning kick. You can also see a very CMA long fist looking movement in the first clip that Newguy posted. It is first done at 00:44 and later is repeated around 1:25. So to say that its movements aren’t traditional may not be entirely accurate, the yare just not traditionally Japanese looking.

[Laurentkd]

foot2face, you make some good points, especially early on in your post. I appreciate getting to see a view point that differs from my initial response. I agree, the first form shown is a technically difficult form and those who can perform it is most likely going to be individuals who have good TKD skills and good overall athleticism. A good challange for younger higher level practioners (I like how you mentioned a lack of power seen in these clips as I would agree, and I would go on to say that if/when I learn this form my stances will be deeper as well for a better performance). I am sure this new form would receive the most "oohs" and "aahhhs" from a crowd (martial artists or not) than our current poomsae. And I think you are also right that KKW TKD has become a different style than what many of us practice. Until we get some sort of name change or a way to differentiate amoung them we will continue to have these issues though.

By the way, does anyone know anything about these forms except for the fact that they are posted on youtube? Do we know for a fact that these are going to be the forms added, or maybe these are just two of the options they are looking at before making a final decision. I see the mooto symbol in the corner but could not find anything on the mooto news site. Anyone understand the Korean being spoken at the end of the second clip newguy posted? I would really like to learn more about what we are looking at.

[exile]

I have no love for the KKW but I do have a deep, profound affection for the fighting system of which they are, unfortunately, the stewards. My master was a big believer in the unified Kwan modern TKD style, but he always kept the WTF at arms length. When ever a newer student would ask “When do we compete in tournaments?” He would reply “Oh no, that’s not what we do here.” Often, after class they would return to the changing room, somewhat disappointed, complaining under their breath of how they are being “jipped” out of a true MA experience. The constant sighing would soon attract the attention of one of the BBs who would sharply query “What do you want; to learn how to fight or how to play a game? The training at my school was hard and geared towards the sole purpose of being able to quickly incapacitate an attacker(s).

I'm completely with your teachers here, f2f.


That being said, I see nothing wrong with these new forms. The forms contain a multitude of advanced (not uselessly flashy) techniques of the KKW style of TKD and demands the practitioner to execute them on both side. Younger, dedicated BBs should have no problem executing these forms nor should older BBs who have kept in shape. My master was in his late 50s when I last saw him and he could easily perform these poomse, while adding the power that’s lacking in the clips. I have used every technique demonstrated during hard sparring sessions and many of them during real altercations, successfully.

It's not a question of being able to perform these poomse. It's more a question of, what is the combat logic that the poomse themselves are expressing? The core idea of kata, poomse or whatever is that your MA teaches you certain technical elements—irreducible basics, like a knifehand strike or a Z-lock—but those in themselves don't tell you how to conduct yourself in a real street encounter, any more than a boxer's hook, jab, and uppercut, as separate elements, tell you how to go about winning a boxing match. The older Kwan forms incorporated what I'm calling the combat logic of the earlier Japanese and Okinawan empty-hand systems: they stitched together techniques into a pattern of application, guided by the particular strategic `wisdom' of the system. So, for example, the principle that you close the distance to get on the outside of the attack where possible and use the attacker's extension of his attacking limb as a way to trap, incapacitate, and ultimately force him into a lowered body position which you can then attack without risk to yourself, is realized in many different ways in Shotokan kata, but it's always the same general principles, manifested in dozens of different ways according to the various kata that this style comprises. And the older Kwan approach to combat mirrorred the Shotokan and Shudokan training of virtually all the original Kwan founders. But what the Kwan founders took over in their forms—their combat blueprints—wasn't a set of individual, isolated techs, but actual scripts for combat, each hyung corresponding to five or six such scripts (just like the kata on which the hyungs were technically based—in some cases literally, like the Taikyuko series, translated whole into TKD as the kichos). Sure, when I look at these hyungs, especially the first one, I see many of these techs; what I don't see is a combat rationale for the way they're organized. I mean, that series of spinning kicks? The move where you have a low, middle and high kick off the same chamber? That's an expression of technical virtuosity, period... and it was you yourself who pointed out that this was the basis of this particular hyung, no? I agree with you: the idea was to showcase balance and flexibility assets that are central to the flash-kick ethic of current Olympic practice... but for defense at night in a dark parking garage???


Devotees of traditional kata/hyung frequently comment on how their forms reflect the practical SD applications of their style, until they get to the high kicks and extremely deep stances. Then no, those are simply for exercise purposes, increasing flexibility and strengthening the legs. Surely they would cede that a form might have uses outside bunkai/boon hae. Can’t they see the value in having a single physically demanding form that catalogues many of your systems more advance movements, even if it was unable to due so in a completely practical manner?

But this comes back to what I was saying earlier; it looks like we simply disagree on the uses of forms. I don't train the kicks in the hyungs and kata I do as high kicks, precisely because the most practical application of those kicks—delivered in physical situations where the bunkai indicate you have control over your attacker's movement—are to lower targets: terminal damage to the side of the attacker's knee joint, knee strikes to his abdomen (with a hard strike to the exposed back of his neck the logical finale) and so on. I train high kicks, to the extent that my physical limits allow, via a set of exercises I've described in other threads, involving increasing stress to the hip flexors, prolonged full extension kicks performed slowly, and maintained for up to a minute or more, using leg weights to increase overload, etc. Forms were not put together to be calisthenic drills, or dedicated skill exercises of the sort that Loren Christensen presents in abundance in his Solo Training books; they were manuals of combat technique, and the assumption, back in the day, was that you would do whatever you had to do to develop the physical skills necessary to implement the instructions in those manuals. Lauren's post above, that I cited in color-coded form, makes this point very nicely.

Think of a boxer's shadow-boxing or partner training routine, and his rope-skipping sessions. You don't do mobility/cardio-capacity exercises like rope-skipping as part of your shadow-boxing training, do you? Rope-skipping and other footwork/endurance exercises are separate, and you pursue them separately to ramp up your physical capabilities to the max so that you can go the distance in the tactical drills that shadow-boxing/partner training consist of. What makes a form physically demanding—be it a strength, balance, or accuracy demand—is something that you are better off approaching through a targeted drill, like the boxer's, or the hip flexor strength exercises various people have been experimenting with.

But here's the crucial thing: if you look at the traditional kata, they aren't particularly physically demanding, because the assumption was, you're going to use the techniques embodied in these kata in a real fight, and you don't want, and don't need, to do anything extreme (and therefore higher-risk) to incapacitate your attacker. I spent a day earlier this year at a seminar with Gm. Pelligrini doing some very, very destructive Combat Hapkido techs, and they imposed very little demand on my strength, balance or flexibility abilities. They were simplicity itself—and they bore a considerable resemblance to techs apparent in traditional karate kata and `old school' TKD hyungs. The demand for extreme balance skills (spectacular high kicks, say) and pinpoint accuracy (because the prime targets are excluded in arena competition) are both manifestations of sport TKD's extremely artificial scoring rules. And that's a big part of my point about these `hyungs': they're embodiments of a point-scoring sport ethic, not a street-combat ethic.


Exile, I can understand how you might feel that these poomse are another step towards TKD the martial sport and a huge departure from tradition but I think you are making the same mistake you have made in the past.You fail to recognize that KKW TKD is completely different from what you practice.

I do? I thought the whole point of my previous posts was that the KKW has taken TKD in a direction radically different from what I call `old school' TKD, the kind I've been taught as a legacy of my SMK lineage and that people like Terry, Lauren and others take to be the `source art' of TKD. The part I've cited in green seems to be exactly what the part I've cited in red attributes to me: a conviction that what I and many other TKD practitioners do is a direct inheritance from our Kwan era ancestry, and what the KKW has been consistently doing over the years is a major deflection of that activity in the direction of an artificial point-scoring kicking game called `Olympic TKD'. I accept the parts in both red and green, but I don't see why you are saying that the part in red represents the failure you attribute to me in green. Haven't I been saying all along that the KKW is promoting something vastly different, unconnected to the SD sources of old-school TKD?

And isn't that what your own instructors were saying, as you cited them at the beginning of your post? You seem to be claiming I fail to see X at the same time that you're saying that that X is part of my own viewpoint...



It’s not just a water down, sports variation of what you do but a wholly distinct fighting system that evolved partly from your style.

How so? Where is there any evidence at all that the KKW curriculum aims at promoting a practical SD system, different from traditional TKD or not? I've seen the bunkai proposed on earlier versions of the WTF/KKW web site, and the assumptions involved were ludicrous... the idea that you stand facing 90º away from your attacker, wait till he gets close enough to throw a lunge punch at you, and then respond with a block, wait for his next move, and block again? Or block, and attack, on the assumption that he just stands there, waiting for your attack? Yet those were the bunkai supplied by the KKW website, the same hopeless applications that Iain Abernethy and other bunkai-jutsu practitioners have torn into little pieces in their writings about the `official' applications of the great classic kata such as the Pinan, Naihanchi and Bassai. I have yet to see any evidence at all that the KKW has ever taken the practical SD applications of its forms seriously.


It resembles your Song Moo Kwan as much as main land Shotokan resembles the CMA from which it evolved. KKW TKD is and amalgamation of various styles and has a lot more uniquely Korean influence than your heavily Japanese inspired system as well as having a good bit of direct CMA influence.

?? Where in the Taegeuks, for example, do you see CMA influence? Or in this pair of new KKW `hyungs', where is the CMA influence? And when you say `uniquely Korean', exactly what are you referring to here? There is now a ton of reseach, a huge amount, documenting the extinction of any prior KMA styles by the end of the late 19th c. as a result of the de facto occupation of Japan, which the Russo-Japanese war only ratified formally, but had been going on a good while previously. What is this `uniquely Korean influence?' Steve Capaner and Stanley Henning have shown that tae kyon, often cited in this connection, was long dead in Korea before the Kwan founders went off to study Shotokan and Shudokan in Japan, and the interview in the current Black Belt with Gm. Kim Soo makes the point clearly: he wanted to study tae kyon and found there wasn't any in the Korea of the 1930s and 1940s. So where is this `uniquely Korean influence coming from? What does it consist of?


Here (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57336) is a link to a video posted by Mr. VanCise, it is an old clip of Kook Sool Won practitioners. Watch the first form they perform in the court yard. Mr. McLain later commented how it’s “very, very similar” to a Chuan-fa form called So Ho Yon. Note the spinning kick, the jumping kick and the jump-spinning kick. You can also see a very CMA long fist looking movement in the first clip that Newguy posted. It is first done at 00:44 and later is repeated around 1:25. So to say that its movements aren’t traditional may not be entirely accurate, the yare just not traditionally Japanese looking.

I've no doubt that there are elements that resemble CMA moves here, as well as resembling many other MA systems; but that's not what you're claiming. You're saying that the KKW has consciously put together a syncretic style, incorporating some unspecified `uniquely Korean' elements, and some kicks and hand movements similar to certain CMA moves (among others) which reflects a particular theory of combat strategy and tactical application. And that is what I would like to see some documentation for. Where are the technical specifications for these elements? To what degree do we need to `reach' for CMA influence, given that almost every separate hand technique in the video clips reflects—so far as I can see—recognizable elements of the Shotokan ancestor of TKD? And most important, just what is the evidence that we have a well-thought-out set of practical fighting applications in these elaborately sticked-together linked showpiece spinning high kicks, unmediated by any hand techs to force the compliance of the attacker??

I'm sorry, but I just don't see any of that. I have to go with what you say your teachers were telling you, in the first bit I cited above from your post. I think they were dead right.

[MikeSlisher]

A LOOONG time ago (I would guess somewhere around '77 to '80 time frame) I was at a fairly large tournament in Michigan and saw two Korean brothers demonstrating hyung/kata/forms. Allegedly one brother was dan ranked in TKD and the other in some Chinese style. The second form on the youtube.video reminds me tremendously of a form demonstrated by the Chinese stylist.

Of course, 25+ years relying on memory doesn't guarantee I'm anywhere close to being right, but when I saw it on the video, I immediately flashed back to that day. Stances and spins are eerily similar.

[FearlessFreep]

OK, then answer my this.

I did Taekwondo for two years...a few tournaments. Instructor was young but insistent on Taekowndo as self defense.

Then I switched to doing Hapkido with some Taekwondo, Muy Thai and BJJ thrown in. Did that for about a year and a half.

However, for various reasons, I'm not doing that and I've taken a month off to look around and I'm seriously thinking about going back to Taekwondo.

I'm not a soldier, or a cop, or a bouncer. Self-defense is not a day-to-day part of my life

"However* I refuse to have a hobby called "martial art" with a root in unarmed combat if what I'm learning and training does not take that seriously

I would like to do maybe a tournament or two a year for the competition and the "what do I really got?" aspect, but I also want to know that the techniques and training I'm putting my time into can be taken seriously should need ever arise for me our for my kids also into martial arts.

Question is, is Taekwondo (still) a place for this goal?

I look at the techniques and think "yeah, that could be powerful and effective" but I look at and read (here) of the 'watered down, kids, competition-only' training and I...I wonder if it would be worth the time.

Honestly and sincerely

[AceHBK]

Great...ANOTHER form to memorize.

[foot2face]

I wold like to do maybe a tournament or two a year for the competition and the "what do I really got?" aspect, but I also want to know that the techniques and training I'm putting my time into can be taken seriously should need ever arise for me our for my kids also into martial arts.

Question is, is Taekwondo (still) a place for this goal?


That depends entirely on who you find to instruct you. Like with any style there are a discouragingly large amount of instructors who aren't worth a damn, but there are still competent masters who can fulfil your needs.

Good luck with the search!

[foot2face]

Exile, I’m afraid that our experiences and perspective on the art is so different that we may have a difficult time immediately understanding one another, but I enjoy the discussion and would like to try so here I go.
Firstly, I know nothing of the new forms other than what I saw in the clips. My post was a first impression analysis and a response to some of the comments that proceeded it. I am not here to defend the new poomse, I can’t, I know nothing definitive about them. Since I believe it futile to debate on the behalf of pure conjecture, I will refrain from making comments directly about the new form but will address some of the things you have said.

The older Kwan forms incorporated what I'm calling the combat logic of the earlier Japanese and Okinawan empty-hand systems: they stitched together techniques into a pattern of application, guided by the particular strategic `wisdom' of the system.
I completely agree with you and would add that the forms practiced by post-Kwan era TKDist have a “combat logic” incorporated within them as well, at least the ones I’ve been taught. It may not be entirely Japanese or Okinawan, but there is defiantly a strategic wisdom to them.

I do? I thought the whole point of my previous posts was that the KKW has taken TKD in a direction radically different from what I call `old school' TKD, the kind I've been taught as a legacy of my SMK lineage …
Again, I believe you are misunderstanding me. When reading many of your post I get the impression that you believe that your traditional, SD oriented, heavily Japanese inspired SMK TKD was watered down by the KKW/WTF into the sport oriented Olympic-style TKD. The point I tried to make was that your missing a step, between your “old school” TKD and Olympic-style was the development of a new combative system. A true fighting style that evolved from other systems, including yours, and that it was this different style that was co-opted by the WTF and unfortunately turned into Olympic TKD.

I have yet to see any evidence at all that the KKW has ever taken the practical SD applications of its forms seriously.
I can’t dispute this. The governing body that is the KKW has dropped the ball on many aspects regarding the art. I was taught and trained in applications of the Tae Geuk poomse, much to the surprise of most TKDist. Though few and far between, there are KKW style instructors who teach them, but there is defiantly a lack of boon hae training across the art as a whole. Besides the push towards Olympic sparring I think the problem also lies in how my style makes use of the forms. I’ve written before about how I was taught to divide H2H into two parts, SD/anti-smothering/anti-grappling and “fighting”. “Fighting” is a spontaneous, aggressive and instinctive response, based on a highly refined skill set and years of rigorous, impromptu force on force training. The SD/anti-smothering/anti-grappling techniques are used to counter specific techniques or tactics that inhibit your ability to “fight“, giving your attacker the advantage. For example, lets say an inside-striker (think Wing Tsun) gets the drop on you, they square you of and take your center, then proceed to drive you back with a vicious barrage of chain punches. You’re in their “kill box” and your “fighting” skills are of little to no use. The kicking, striking, blocking and evasive footwork you normally relay on to dominate you adversary are of little help to you because of the proximity of your attacker, your vulnerable position and the fact that you are being driven backwards. This is the time to use one of the appropriate boon hae from our poomse. It is believed that “fighting” is the more determinative of the two aspects of H2H. It’s simple “hit fast, hit hard and don’t get hit” approach able to resolve the majority of altercations on its own; because of this I believe boon hae training often falls by the wayside. In most schools the poomse are nothing more then a formal exercise.

And when you say `uniquely Korean', exactly what are you referring to here? There is now a ton of reseach, a huge amount, documenting the extinction of any prior KMA styles by the end of the late 19th c. …What is this `uniquely Korean influence?' Steve Capaner and Stanley Henning have shown that tae kyon, often cited in this connection, was long dead in Korea before the Kwan founders went off to study Shotokan and Shamokin ... So where is this `uniquely Korean influence coming from? What does it consist of?
When I say “uniquely Korean” I’m not referring to the supposed inclusion of ancient Korean MAs but contemporary Korean culture, and how it impacted the MAs studied at the time. Similar to how many MA systems have changed after being brought to the U.S., like how the Brazilians modified jujutsu/judo or just like how the Japanese altered the CMAs they were exposed to. While some Korean styles remain true to their Japanese heritage others have evolved, reflecting the unique experiences of their practitioners. I recall reading an article many years ago regarding General Choi and his system. The author wrote some thing to the effect that Shotokan went into the Korean War and came out TKD. He wasn’t merely implying a name change but that experience gained in the war began to change their understanding of MA, altering the system. This is the type of uniquely Korean influences I was referring to.
Exile, your post was full of many great comment that I would like to address, unfortunately I’m really pressed for time right now and couldn’t get to all of them.
Best Holiday Wishes - F2F

[exile]

Exile, your post was full of many great comment that I would like to address, unfortunately I’m really pressed for time right now and couldn’t get to all of them.
Best Holiday Wishes - F2F



Likewise with yours, f2f!

This is the kind of back-and-forth debate/discussion I really enjoy and that shows why MT is such a great forum; alas, these pesky holidays are making it very difficult for me to get in my usual quota of reading/thinking time on the board... will read your post again carefully as soon as no one is around to find work for me to do :rolleyes: and will try to see how it relates to my own take on things.

Meanwhile, you too have a great holiday; afterwards, let the conversation go merrily on! :)

cheers, exile

[jks9199]

I'm not a soldier, or a cop, or a bouncer. Self-defense is not a day-to-day part of my life


Just a quick reality check. Unless you live alone, in an inpenetrable gated compound which you never leave, self defense should be part of your life. Bad people ARE out there, and they go where you go. (A famous bank robber, whose name escapes my memory, is reported to have answered the question "why do you rob banks?" with "That's where the money is!") For most people, most of the time, their self defense should be focused on recognizing and avoiding, when possible, dangerous situations, and then on being prepared appropriately when they must go somewhere dangerous. A handful of solid, reliable, simple self-defense techniques are all they need.


"However* I refuse to have a hobby called "martial art" with a root in unarmed combat if what I'm learning and training does not take that seriously

I would like to do maybe a tournament or two a year for the competition and the "what do I really got?" aspect, but I also want to know that the techniques and training I'm putting my time into can be taken seriously should need ever arise for me our for my kids also into martial arts.

Question is, is Taekwondo (still) a place for this goal?

I look at the techniques and think "yeah, that could be powerful and effective" but I look at and read (here) of the 'watered down, kids, competition-only' training and I...I wonder if it would be worth the time.

Honestly and sincerely

First -- tournaments are, at best, a different pressure test and not a good measure of your ability (or an art's capability) to defend yourself.

With that out of the way, the answer to your question is "it depends." Many martial arts schools, especially (in my experience) tae kwon do schools, have focused on answering a market need for something for kids to do, family sports activities, and day care in a "non-day care" environment. This isn't bad; it isn't evil; it's not even wrong. It's a legitimate BUSINESS decision based on the market and the reality that a business needs to make money to stay in business.

However, there are Tae Kwon Do schools that remain realistic and function oriented. Some do both; the "grown up" classes are in the evenings and the "kiddie" classes run during the day. Others are purely for adults, and don't cater to the family/kid oriented programs. So, if you want a function/adult oriented TKD school, just look around. The more they're focused on tournaments and Olympic TKD events, the less likely the are to be function oriented, as a general guide.

[FearlessFreep]

Just a quick reality check. Unless you live alone, in an inpenetrable gated compound which you never leave, self defense should be part of your life. Bad people ARE out there, and they go where you go. (A famous bank robber, whose name escapes my memory, is reported to have answered the question "why do you rob banks?" with "That's where the money is!") For most people, most of the time, their self defense should be focused on recognizing and avoiding, when possible, dangerous situations, and then on being prepared appropriately when they must go somewhere dangerous. A handful of solid, reliable, simple self-defense techniques are all they need.

Oh, yes, I know what you're saying. I take the self-defense aspects of Taekwondo seriously, and it's importance in my life and my families. Just that it needs to be balanced. I was spending up to 20 hours a week in class at one point and that's an awful lot of time to spend on something you hope will never happen. If you have a hobby like "Taekwondo", I think you are already taking self-defense seriously or you wouldn't be there ( I would hop ) and do need to take that aspect seriously

First -- tournaments are, at best, a different pressure test and not a good measure of your ability (or an art's capability) to defend yourself

Oh, yeah, by 'what I got'.. partially it's "How am I doing compared to my peers?" as a competitive thing but mostly I approach it as a way to test my own reactions, speed, adrenaline, stress, against a willed opponent who acts in ways I can't predict and who is acting against me. Not a street fight, not a realistic self-defense situation, but just another measuring stick of where I am in certain areas of my training

[TKDmel]

To me they look flashy and "modern". Tae kwon do is not a modern art form. These forms would do well at open karate tourneys, but does not give us the traditional lower stances that are all part of training. I tell my students that the lower the stance the more we train our muscles and discipline ourselves to perform things to develop our bodies and mind. While the numerous kicks look good, they are just too flashy for me. Give me "old school" Tae kwon do!

[Laurentkd]

Again, I believe you are misunderstanding me. When reading many of your post I get the impression that you believe that your traditional, SD oriented, heavily Japanese inspired SMK TKD was watered down by the KKW/WTF into the sport oriented Olympic-style TKD. The point I tried to make was that your missing a step, between your “old school” TKD and Olympic-style was the development of a new combative system. A true fighting style that evolved from other systems, including yours, and that it was this different style that was co-opted by the WTF and unfortunately turned into Olympic TKD.



I am most interested in this part of your post (although I enjoyed all of it). Can you tell me more about your idea that "WTF style" (for lack of a better term) is a fighting style evolved from other systems? What systems are you referring to? How and when did this evolution take place? I would really like to hear your thoughts on this so I can understand your opinion as it seems to be a new idea to me or at least comes from a different angle. Of course, with the holidays I know I may have to wait... :)

[e ship yuk]

These forms appear, to me, to be more in line with "TKD-based self-defense" than what I've seen of the previous forms. Granted, I've not studied any of the KKW forms, except 2 of the palgwe forms. TKD starts from a couple of basic premises:

1) The legs are the strongest part of the body.
2) The legs are the longest part of the body.

1+2=legs as primary weapons. Whether that means standing, jumping, or spinning kicks. Isn't this what everyone wanted when the kwans unified? "How can we make TKD more unique? Lots of kicks!" They standardized the sparring rules around this. They teach line drills marching up and down dojangs the world over throwing jump kick after spin jump kick.

Then you get to the forms. The forms don't follow the "legs as primary weapons" principle. Lots of hand techs with a couple of kicks. It's a somewhat bizarre dichotomy, which truthfully is evident in most arts, but especially in TKD.

Which one will someone fall back on when forced to defend themselves? Probably the former, because the forms are so different from the rest of the training, and somewhat marginalized.

These forms, at least the first one, appears to try to bridge that. Time will tell whether there are "official" applications, but just watching the first form a couple of times, other than the oddly-placed flying sidekicks, all of the jumping/spinning kicks are placed after what I would term "distancing techniques" - techs designed to push your opponent away or make him retreat, giving you more room for the follow-up. Another of the sequences of kicks starts with a step back followed by a skipping roundhouse kick. Did they just think it looked cool, or did they want to teach evading and follow-ups, or feigning weakness to draw in an opponent?

All conjecture. But to me, the old (and not likely to be replaced anytime soon) way looked like "fight using these principles, practice forms (which could be self defense) using these principles". If these forms, and more like them, are used, it would seem to form a more coherent system, wherein instead of borrowing Japanese self-defense principles, they would use the principles, or at least similar ones, taught in the rest of the curriculum.

Or, you know, they just thought they looked cool.

[TKDJUDO]

What Dan are these forms supposed to be taught at ?:tantrum:

[terryl965]

To me they look flashy and "modern". Tae kwon do is not a modern art form. These forms would do well at open karate tourneys, but does not give us the traditional lower stances that are all part of training. I tell my students that the lower the stance the more we train our muscles and discipline ourselves to perform things to develop our bodies and mind. While the numerous kicks look good, they are just too flashy for me. Give me "old school" Tae kwon do!

To be honest with you beam me a board with you, those flashey kicks just turn me off completely.

[exile]

These forms appear, to me, to be more in line with "TKD-based self-defense" than what I've seen of the previous forms. Granted, I've not studied any of the KKW forms, except 2 of the palgwe forms. TKD starts from a couple of basic premises:

1) The legs are the strongest part of the body.
2) The legs are the longest part of the body.

1+2=legs as primary weapons. Whether that means standing, jumping, or spinning kicks. Isn't this what everyone wanted when the kwans unified? "How can we make TKD more unique? Lots of kicks!" They standardized the sparring rules around this. They teach line drills marching up and down dojangs the world over throwing jump kick after spin jump kick.

Then you get to the forms. The forms don't follow the "legs as primary weapons" principle. Lots of hand techs with a couple of kicks. It's a somewhat bizarre dichotomy, which truthfully is evident in most arts, but especially in TKD.

There's no dichotomy. The forms are the record of tested combat techniques, and the fact that in traditional, SD-based Chinese, Okinawan, Japanese and Korean forms the hand techs greatly outnumber the leg techs tells you pretty much everything you need to know.


Which one will someone fall back on when forced to defend themselves? Probably the former, because the forms are so different from the rest of the training, and somewhat marginalized.

Look at Simon O'Neil's article `Kicking in Self-Defense: a Practical Re-evaluation' (Taekwondo Times, November, 2005)for a very good critique of the role of kicks in CQ street combat. The forms in TKD are `marginalized' because the technique for interpreting them as practical jutsu technical guides, what in Japanese is called kaisai no genri, has essentially been lost, and not just in the KMAs. It was lost in Japanese Karate as well, and only during the past decade has any serious effort been made to recover it. And the version of karate that gave rise to TKD were probably seriously diluted even with respect to standards in Japan, given the attitude of the Japanese towards citizens of Korea.


These forms, at least the first one, appears to try to bridge that. Time will tell whether there are "official" applications, but just watching the first form a couple of times, other than the oddly-placed flying sidekicks, all of the jumping/spinning kicks are placed after what I would term "distancing techniques" - techs designed to push your opponent away or make him retreat, giving you more room for the follow-up. Another of the sequences of kicks starts with a step back followed by a skipping roundhouse kick. Did they just think it looked cool, or did they want to teach evading and follow-ups, or feigning weakness to draw in an opponent?

Good questions. But I doubt that we're going to be finding out anytime soon. If what earlier posters have said is correct, the whole intention of these new forms what to compress into a single hyung a large number of `showcase' techniques, and I very much question the self-defense sincerity of their designers. A series of three kicks off a single chamber, at low, middle, and head height?? Just what kind of `realistic' combat response does that move correspond to—bearing in mind that to be maximally effective, a middle-height side-kick has to target an attacker who's further away than a close-up assailant, someone you've almost certainly knocked over if that low kick were been successful? And assuming that the latter attack works successfully, why on earth would you follow up with a head-high kick, given that the attacker would almost certainly not be upright, at this point? The whole sequence screams DEMO in italicized caps...

Empty flash, is what I'm seeing.


All conjecture. But to me, the old (and not likely to be replaced anytime soon) way looked like "fight using these principles, practice forms (which could be self defense) using these principles". If these forms, and more like them, are used, it would seem to form a more coherent system, wherein instead of borrowing Japanese self-defense principles, they would use the principles, or at least similar ones, taught in the rest of the curriculum.

This way of putting it baffles me. To the extent that TKD ever had explicit `self-defense principles', those principles were Japanese. Tang soo do/Kong soo do are the Korean translations of the two senses of Japanese kara te under its `empty/Chinese hand' transliterations. Given that that's what the Kwan founders learned, from the horse's mouth, so to speak—Gichin Funakoshi and Toyama Kanken, respectively—why describe what happened as `borrowing'? TKD was Korean karate, period, before the nationalist-inspired purge of all things Japanese became de rigueur there. What I see is incoherence: a complete lack of any systematic theory of CQ combat in those forms, especially the first.


Or, you know, they just thought they looked cool.

That, I think, is far more likely.

The 'missing link' in this discussion is a point raised by foot2face earlier; I'd like to get back to that, and will as soon as I can, since I think it's crucial to this discussion... later, with luck....

[e ship yuk]

There's no dichotomy. The forms are the record of tested combat techniques, and the fact that in traditional, SD-based Chinese, Okinawan, Japanese and Korean forms the hand techs greatly outnumber the leg techs tells you pretty much everything you need to know.


There is a great dichotomy - between the sparring techniques taught and the form techniques taught. The two methods of fighting are very different.



Look at Simon O'Neil's article `Kicking in Self-Defense: a Practical Re-evaluation' (Taekwondo Times, November, 2005)for a very good critique of the role of kicks in CQ street combat. The forms in TKD are `marginalized' because the technique for interpreting them as practical jutsu technical guides, what in Japanese is called kaisai no genri, has essentially been lost, and not just in the KMAs. It was lost in Japanese Karate as well, and only during the past decade has any serious effort been made to recover it. And the version of karate that gave rise to TKD were probably seriously diluted even with respect to standards in Japan, given the attitude of the Japanese towards citizens of Korea.

I agree with you, but the reason behind the marginalization was not my point. In fact, I'd almost say the forms are marginalized because they are not what TKD is about - at least not KKW TKD. It's about sparring. I think TKD only has forms because the arts from which it descended had forms. They didn't really give them any thought.



Good questions. But I doubt that we're going to be finding out anytime soon. If what earlier posters have said is correct, the whole intention of these new forms what to compress into a single hyung a large number of `showcase' techniques, and I very much question the self-defense sincerity of their designers. A series of three kicks off a single chamber, at low, middle, and head height?? Just what kind of `realistic' combat response does that move correspond to—bearing in mind that to be maximally effective, a middle-height side-kick has to target an attacker who's further away than a close-up assailant, someone you've almost certainly knocked over if that low kick were been successful? And assuming that the latter attack works successfully, why on earth would you follow up with a head-high kick, given that the attacker would almost certainly not be upright, at this point? The whole sequence screams DEMO in italicized caps...


I interpreted them as roundhouse kicks; it's tough to tell from the video. I also interpreted that series as a symbolic "kick knee, kick groin, kick head," not "kick low, kick medium, kick high."



This way of putting it baffles me. To the extent that TKD ever had explicit `self-defense principles', those principles were Japanese. Tang soo do/Kong soo do are the Korean translations of the two senses of Japanese kara te under its `empty/Chinese hand' transliterations. Given that that's what the Kwan founders learned, from the horse's mouth, so to speak—Gichin Funakoshi and Toyama Kanken, respectively—why describe what happened as `borrowing'? TKD was Korean karate, period, before the nationalist-inspired purge of all things Japanese became de rigueur there. What I see is incoherence: a complete lack of any systematic theory of CQ combat in those forms, especially the first.

Again, it's the dichotomy between the sparring and the forms. Students are taught two completely different ways of fighting - one at range, with lots of kicks, one very close, with lots of grabs, and locks, and few kicks. One is KKW TKD, the other is... well... not what KKW wants to be thought of as TKD. That's why I described it as "borrowing."

I'm not arguing the true combat efficacy of these forms; all I'm saying is that this appears an attempt to encode fighting methods based on TKD sparring principles. If that is their goal, I think this works better than the previous forms. You can look at these forms and tell that what you are looking at is TKD. Better yet, you can perform these and feel like you are doing TKD.

[exile]

There is a great dichotomy - between the sparring techniques taught and the form techniques taught. The two methods of fighting are very different.



I agree with you, but the reason behind the marginalization was not my point. In fact, I'd almost say the forms are marginalized because they are not what TKD is about - at least not KKW TKD. It's about sparring. I think TKD only has forms because the arts from which it descended had forms. They didn't really give them any thought.



I interpreted them as roundhouse kicks; it's tough to tell from the video. I also interpreted that series as a symbolic "kick knee, kick groin, kick head," not "kick low, kick medium, kick high."



Again, it's the dichotomy between the sparring and the forms. Students are taught two completely different ways of fighting - one at range, with lots of kicks, one very close, with lots of grabs, and locks, and few kicks. One is KKW TKD, the other is... well... not what KKW wants to be thought of as TKD. That's why I described it as "borrowing."

I'm not arguing the true combat efficacy of these forms; all I'm saying is that this appears an attempt to encode fighting methods based on TKD sparring principles. If that is their goal, I think this works better than the previous forms. You can look at these forms and tell that what you are looking at is TKD. Better yet, you can perform these and feel like you are doing TKD.

I think we're mostly on the same page, ESY... can't do your post or f2f's justice now, but please don't think I'm blowing your comments off; there's a certain core idea here that needs to be extracted and spotlighted concerning the relation between KKW TKD and the idea of TKD as a robust, adaptable, eminently effective self-defense system. More soon on this, as soon as the festivities allow...

[FearlessFreep]

I always try to approach it that Sparring is not Taekwondo and Forms are not Taekwondo and Hoshinsul is not Taekwondo but all three are training components to the larger Fighting Style of Taekwondo. Not separate or distinct, but intended to be complimentary and integrated.

But then, I also tend to view forms as being a catalog of techniques. In the same way that a pentatonic scale is a technique used in blues, playing a pentatonic scale is not playing blues at all, or even music. It's just a selection of notes together than when interpreted in a musical form can become music in the hands of the artist. Similarly the form to me is not the art, for form is merely the cataloging of the mechanical components of what, when expressed in another context will become an artistic expression or a combat expression, depending on the context. I mean, even looking at Taeguek Il-Jang. To me it's not fighting technique, but an abstraction of the mechanical expression of a 'perfect' technique, but one in which principals should be derived. Il-Jang has hard blocks low, middle, high, with a counterstrike after each block, a lot to learn and use in that, now take it out of doing Il-Jang as the form the way the diagrams and videos show and practice, practice practice that block-counterstrike combination, not just as a mechanical abstraction but as an effective, applicable, technique.

I guess what I'm saying is that a "Form" is not "Taekwondo" but that a Form is just a physical description of the components of what Taekwondo will be when you stop doing the form as it is and start doing the form as what it is pointing too.

But that's just my state of mind...

[YoungMan]

I personally think it's high time the Kukkiwon developed new forms that integrated and showcased modern TKD techniques (i.e. spinning, jumping, flying, high kicks etc.). However, not techniques to be used in sparring, but techniques with actual martial application.
I agree-not all techniques in the modern WTF forms are what you would call practical. But they all have a reason for existing (balance, isometric power, tradition). Develop new forms with modern technique, but keep the traditional principles.

[exile]

I personally think it's high time the Kukkiwon developed new forms that integrated and showcased modern TKD techniques (i.e. spinning, jumping, flying, high kicks etc.). However, not techniques to be used in sparring, but techniques with actual martial application.
I agree-not all techniques in the modern WTF forms are what you would call practical. But they all have a reason for existing (balance, isometric power, tradition). Develop new forms with modern technique, but keep the traditional principles.

Sorry, but I don't get this at all.

Let's start with the technical sources of what came to be called TKD in the two decades following WWII. The kata from which the classical TKD hyungs derive were based on strictly SD principles, aiming at maximum destructiveness in minimum time and space; guys like Matsumura and Itosu were breaking with tradition when they produced the linear-movement-based Okinawan karate kata, given the previous dominance of Chinese techs there. So the `traditional principles' you allude to were principles of self-defense strategy embodied in specific tactics depending on the nature of the assault being countered. They weren't there to train balance, isometric or any other kind of power. Training drills specifically for those purposes didn't emerge until the transposition of Karate to Japan with Funakoshi and the other Okinawan expats, and the leeching of martial content from the kata, as described in Gennosuke Higaki's Hidden Karate: the True Bunkai for the Heian Katas and Naihanchi. Bill Burgar notes in his book on Gojushiho, Five Years, One Kata that kata were retreaded during this period as (i) parts of the militaristic calisthenics being introduced to large groups of army recruits-to-be at Japanese universities, and (ii) rank advancement criteria, gradually losing all serious connection with practical combat use. The original point of Okinawan kata was to encode, in mnemonically convenient fashion, a great many different real-time combat scenarios into a small set of general movement patterns admitting multiple interpretations, corresponding to different bunkai; it was up to the student to learn how to extract the fighting applications from those kata. There was no sense that that kata were there to teach you balance, or generation of power, or anything else of that sort: they were instructions—scripts—for damaging an untrained but possibly dangerous, violent assailant.

These points have been documented and discussed in detail in an increasingly deep literature of kata analysis, with names like Rick Clark, Iain Abernethy, Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder, Javier Martinez, Bill Burgar and Patrick McCarthy amongst the pioneers, and TKDists such as Stuart Anslow and Simon John O'Neil showing how exactly the same kind of bunkai analysis yields practical, streetworthy combat techns for TKD hyungs. But the modern techniques you allude to in TKD were not developed for street use! They were developed for the artificial point-scoring conventions of Olympic-style TKD. They make sense only in connection with arena competition, with martial sport TKD. They have nothing to do with what in Japan would be identified as jutsu; that isn't their function, their raison d'être—it was sparring success under WTF rules that they were devised for.

So when you say, 'Develop new forms with modern technique, but keep the traditional principles', what are you thinking of? The modern techniques and the traditional principles grind against each other, insofar as modern techniques include spinning, jumping, flying kicks etc., the things you pointed out in your last paragraph. The traditional techniques of 'old school' TKD, in contrast, were the ones that were devised for self-defense under conditions of close-quarters nasty violence. If you're trying to preserve traditional principles, where is the virtue in trying to serve those principles by 'modern techs' which have at best only a marginal relationship to the combat situations that those traditional principles were forged in?

Something foot2face mentioned at the end of his last post seems to me highly relevant to this discussion... I'm outta time here tonight but as soon as the, um, festivities of the day are done with tomorrow I want to come back to something he was suggesting about the evolution of combat techniques under the KKW in the post-Korean War era. But it's just too damned late now....

[FearlessFreep]

'm outta time here tonight ..

You know.. you keep posting really long posts and saying "I don't have time to go into detail..." the last day or two :)

[exile]

'm outta time here tonight ..

You know.. you keep posting really long posts and saying "I don't have time to go into detail..." the last day or two :)

And it's true!

I've been up way later than I should be, we've had some rough things happen to us this Christmas and my sleep cycle is even more screwed up than it usually is. But I am going to come back to f2f's posts and try to connect it to my own understanding of TKD history...

[YoungMan]

To quantify what I posted earlier: I think it's time the Kukkiwon developed new forms that integrate what you would consider Korean-style technique (i.e. kicking) into modern forms.
The ITF forms alluded to these kicking techniques, and certainly proved they don't need to be sport based. They included spinning kicks, jumping side kicks, jump spinning kicks. The majority of these based on Chung Do Kwan, since that's where Gen. Choi and his black belts came from. For the life of me, I can't understand why the Kukkiwon didn't include these in the Palgue/Koryo forms.
I have sen Youtube video of Taekkyon, btw, and Taekkyon uses those techniques. So they are part of the heritage.

[exile]

To quantify what I posted earlier: I think it's time the Kukkiwon developed new forms that integrate what you would consider Korean-style technique (i.e. kicking) into modern forms.
The ITF forms alluded to these kicking techniques, and certainly proved they don't need to be sport based. They included spinning kicks, jumping side kicks, jump spinning kicks. The majority of these based on Chung Do Kwan, since that's where Gen. Choi and his black belts came from. For the life of me, I can't understand why the Kukkiwon didn't include these in the Palgue/Koryo forms.

General Choi came from Shotokan karate, YM. He received a second dan under Gichin Funakoshi. And if you read the interview with Gm. Kim Soo in the January Black Belt, with our own Rob McLain (one of his students) supplying the questions, you'll see that in the first phase of his teaching Gen. Choi taught the same Shotokan syllabus as all the other Kwan founders, who were, with the sole exception of Hwang Kee, all trained in Japan in either Shotokan or Toyama Kanken's Shukokan style of Japanese karate. It wasn't until much later that Gen. Choi began the deliberate expunging of the Japanese karate content that he had learned from his teaching. The Palgwes were based on the original O/J kata, which the KKW was apparently not quite as anxious to eliminate as General Choi was; they were the ones preserving what 'Korean martial arts tradition'—Japanese in content going back to the Occupation in the late 19th c., and virtually taken over whole from Chinese MAs prior to that, so far as we can tell from the documentary sources. For example, look carefully over the Pinan/Heian set and compare it with the Palgwes (which we use in my school, rather than the Taegeuks) and you'll see that huge chunks of them are taken over either literally, or with fairly simple transpositions of moves, from the Pinan/Heian sets (and from the Taikyoku katas, incororporated with virtually no change into TKD/TSD as the Kichos). The Palgwes are the KKW's first incomplete, tentative steps in the direction of suppression of TKD's Okinawan/Japanese ancestry (well, that and the elimination of the Pyung-Ahn hyungs, which are of course nothing other than the Heian katas that the Kwan founders had been exposed to in their original training).


I have sen Youtube video of Taekkyon, btw, and Taekkyon uses those techniques. So they are part of the heritage.

Modern 'taekyon' is virtually a new martial art, having little or nothing to do with the foot-wrestling folk game called taekyon that was suppressed by the Japanese in the 19th c. and died out in Korea (see the aforementioned interview with Gm. Kim I mentioned earlier, as well as Steve Capener's authoritative article on the early history of TKD techniques here (http://www.bluewavetkd.com/images/GoalSheets/capeneressay.pdf); note also the discussion in S. Henry Cho's 1968 pioneer textbook, Taekwondo: Secrets of Korean Karate, who bluntly notes that 'The modern karate of Korea, with very little influence from tae kyun, was born with the turn of the 20th century when it was imported directly from China and also from Okinawa through Japan' (p. 17). If you look at Stan Henning's 2000 comphrehensive overview Journal of Asian Martial Arts paper, `Traditional Korean Martial Arts', you'll see that much of the claim for documentary evidence on behalf of 'taekyon' in ancient Korean martial practice rests on the misidentification of 'taekkyon' with early documentary references to takkyon `push-shoulders'; see also Marc Tedeschi's comments in his massive handbook Taekwondo about the erroneous belief that terms like subak and takkyon refer to specific techniques, when in fact they are generic labels for unbalancing, striking etc. Modern taekkyon has the same relation to ancient taekyon (whatever that might have been) that modern `Shaolin kenpo' of the Demasco variety has to whatever the temple monks were doing 1300 years ago or so. Given that it was developed at the same time that TKD's kicks were getting higher and higher and flashier and flashier, it's not surprising that it contains many of the same kind of techs, but I've seen early photos of people supposedly demonstrating the taekyon that they did in their youth, and the techs (which seem to involve leg-blocking and other leg-wrestling moves found in much of northern Asia) don't look to me anything like TKD; see Dave Beck's well-considered assessment of the whole taekyon story here (http://www.beckmartialarts.com/ctkdfaq.html), with his similar response to the taekyon he's seen.

It's for this reason that I don't think it makes sense to talk about indigenous KMAs apart from the early mid-20th century Japanese striking arts that was the MA training basis of every one of the Kwan founders, and which persist, even in mixmastered/recombined form, in the TKD hyungs, reflecting the kata-based techs underlying these hyungs. And those kata in turn derived from street-tested Okinawan fighting principles and systems going back to the mid-19th c. Was there anything specifically combat-oriented that emerged in the 'de-Japanization' of TKD following the Korean War era? This is something that f2f brought up, and that I think needs to be discussed in a bit of detail so that we know what the evidence base is and what it points too... want to get back to this but we have to go out for Xmas dinner with friends tonight :rolleyes:...

[foot2face]

I am most interested in this part of your post (although I enjoyed all of it). Can you tell me more about your idea that "WTF style" (for lack of a better term) is a fighting style evolved from other systems? What systems are you referring to? How and when did this evolution take place? I would really like to hear your thoughts on this so I can understand your opinion as it seems to be a new idea to me or at least comes from a different angle. Of course, with the holidays I know I may have to wait... :)
First Lauren, I would like to wish you a Happy Holiday and I hope the coming New Year brings you and your loved ones good fortune.
I’m still pretty busy and regrettably couldn’t devote more time to your post but here is a very brief response. I hope it answers some of your questions and helps you gain insight on my perspective.
There is little that those discussing the history of TKD can agree upon. One seemingly indisputable point though, was that during the 50s began a movement to “merge” the Kwans; the Kwans being the predominate MA schools in Korea at the time. While the majority of the Kwans MA lineage can be traced back to Shotokan there are Kwans who have a different MA background; most notably Chang Moo Kwan and Moo Duk Kwan. Chang Moo Kwan’s founder taught a combination of Shudokan and Chuan-fa. Moo Duk Kwan founder, Hwang Kee’s MA background is difficult to discern, the only formal training he may have received was in a CMA while working on the railroads in China. Even those Kwans who’s primary art was Shotokan based had their own take on the system and had developed different preferences towards application. Most credit General Choi with spurring the movement to merge, creating an environment which allowed members of various Kwans to share their knowledge and experience. This eventually led to representatives of the Kwans coming together, in the late 60s early 70s, and creating poomse for the emerging system.
Be Well - F2F

[terryl965]

F2F let me chime in here General Choi is what most people call the founding father of modern day TKD, his vision and this is just what Iwas told by other Koreans here. He wabted a more combat personal approach for the Korean Army and for this to truely happen the early Kwans had to came together to form what became the KTA and later the Kukkiwon. the General vision was more about the combat and later the SD principle that what others wanted so the split happened around 1970 that is when the new sets of poomsae came in and was more about basic SD principle and truely just those of the Korean Government. This is when they tried to completely erase all facts about Shotokan Karate and started more of a Korean look to them.

I wish I had more time to go into all of this and maybe after Junior National and the holidays I will.

[exile]

First Lauren, I would like to wish you a Happy Holiday and I hope the coming New Year brings you and your loved ones good fortune.
I’m still pretty busy and regrettably couldn’t devote more time to your post but here is a very brief response. I hope it answers some of your questions and helps you gain insight on my perspective.
There is little that those discussing the history of TKD can agree upon. One seemingly indisputable point though, was that during the 50s began a movement to “merge” the Kwans; the Kwans being the predominate MA schools in Korea at the time. While the majority of the Kwans MA lineage can be traced back to Shotokan there are Kwans who have a different MA background; most notably Chang Moo Kwan and Moo Duk Kwan. Chang Moo Kwan’s founder taught a combination of Shudokan and Chuan-fa. Moo Duk Kwan founder, Hwang Kee’s MA background is difficult to discern, the only formal training he may have received was in a CMA while working on the railroads in China. Even those Kwans who’s primary art was Shotokan based had their own take on the system and had developed different preferences towards application. Most credit General Choi with spurring the movement to merge, creating an environment which allowed members of various Kwans to share their knowledge and experience. This eventually led to representatives of the Kwans coming together, in the late 60s early 70s, and creating poomse for the emerging system.
Be Well - F2F



F2F let me chime in here General Choi is what most people call the founding father of modern day TKD, his vision and this is just what Iwas told by other Koreans here. He wabted a more combat personal approach for the Korean Army and for this to truely happen the early Kwans had to came together to form what became the KTA and later the Kukkiwon. the General vision was more about the combat and later the SD principle that what others wanted so the split happened around 1970 that is when the new sets of poomsae came in and was more about basic SD principle and truely just those of the Korean Government. This is when they tried to completely erase all facts about Shotokan Karate and started more of a Korean look to them.

I wish I had more time to go into all of this and maybe after Junior National and the holidays I will.

I think both of you guys are correct in terms of the broad outlines of what happened. A lot of the rest involves attribution of attitude, motive and so on, and that's where much of the disagreement arises. The sequence of events that I suggest here (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=901735) is, I'd argue, the one best supported by what documentary evidence we have, along with the testimony of reliable living witnesses (crucial, since so much of the history either was not recorded or was documented in records that were lost or destroyed).

To me, the irreducible über-fact about this whole period is the uniqueness, in the history of the Asian martial arts, of the role of the State in the formation of the contemporary Korean MAs. I've indicated in the linked post above's own links why I think that came about in Korea, as vs. China, Okinawa, or Japan. If we abstract away from idiosyncratic facts about the life of this or that individual and try to come up with a historical account of the rather unique situation of TKD in the MA world, the facts I've emphasized are, I believe, the ones offering the greatest explanatory promise.

[foot2face]

What I was alluding to when I wrote that “Most credit General Choi with spurring the movement to merge, creating an environment which allowed members of various Kwans to share their knowledge and experience,” was that there is evidence that this was not his original intent. Rather than unifying the Kwans, some believe he wished to replace them with a new Korean system of his own design. This seems to be supported by the informative post Exile linked to and I believe it to be the first among many points of contention, between General Choi and the Korean MA community with it’s respective masters, eventually leading to his ousting. As Exile touched upon in his linked post, General Choi apparently recruited/strong-armed skilled and prominent members of various Kwans into his Oh Do Kwan, in an attempt to drain their pool of talent. I think this somewhat backfired on him. Instead of overwriting the knowledge of the other Kwans with his own he actually created an environment that allowed them to share their experience. One would serve under General Choi, he would order “You are no longer (insert Kwan name here) you are Oh Do Kwan now!”, but it’s not as if this erased their prior knowledge or methods, simply because he ordered it so. One would begin their training in Oh Do Kwan, drawing on, lets say, their Chang Moo Kwan experience, with the man on his right having come form Ji Do Kwan and the man to his left from Moo Duk Kwan. These men would all train together under the same system while relying on the skill they had already gained from their Kwans. Thus began the merging of the Kwans and the eventual sharing of their knowledge. A senior BB at my school once commented that “General Choi and the Kwan’s head masters didn’t created TKD, the soldiers did, their students did.” This is what I think he meant by that.

[terryl965]

What I was alluding to when I wrote that “Most credit General Choi with spurring the movement to merge, creating an environment which allowed members of various Kwans to share their knowledge and experience,” was that there is evidence that this was not his original intent. Rather than unifying the Kwans, some believe he wished to replace them with a new Korean system of his own design. This seems to be supported by the informative post Exile linked to and I believe it to be the first among many points of contention, between General Choi and the Korean MA community with it’s respective masters, eventually leading to his ousting. As Exile touched upon in his linked post, General Choi apparently recruited/strong-armed skilled and prominent members of various Kwans into his Oh Do Kwan, in an attempt to drain their pool of talent. I think this somewhat backfired on him. Instead of overwriting the knowledge of the other Kwans with his own he actually created an environment that allowed them to share their experience. One would serve under General Choi, he would order “You are no longer (insert Kwan name here) you are Oh Do Kwan now!”, but it’s not as if this erased their prior knowledge or methods, simply because he ordered it so. One would begin their training in Oh Do Kwan, drawing on, lets say, their Chang Moo Kwan experience, with the man on his right having come form Ji Do Kwan and the man to his left from Moo Duk Kwan. These men would all train together under the same system while relying on the skill they had already gained from their Kwans. Thus began the merging of the Kwans and the eventual sharing of their knowledge. A senior BB at my school once commented that “General Choi and the Kwan’s head masters didn’t created TKD, the soldiers did, their students did.” This is what I think he meant by that.

I can see your views an this and it makes sense, the part about the soldiers making it is more practical than the General. My take isa simple one he had the forsight to bring them together, whether it be him the other Kwans or the soldiers, we must know find the hidden truth about the ARt we practice so we can move a head with the western styles of KMA.

[kittybreed]

Hello. I have stumbed across two new forms designed by the Kukkiwon. Here is a youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5cRWdG4spk

Now, I have also seen at least one of our members, who I respect, comment on these forms favourably on some other message board. (The board and the member will go unnamed). I myself think these forms are grand!

Thoughts?

Very nice! Question- What dan is this for? Also I noticed they've painted the walls a brighter white and the kukkiwon looks much brighter. =]

[AceHBK]

This is why I can't excel at TKD...I can't remember forms for anything. I can't even remember my white belt. For some reason I never took a interest in forms and only learned b/c it was a requirement.

[exile]

This is why I can't excel at TKD...I can't remember forms for anything. I can't even remember my white belt. For some reason I never took a interest in forms and only learned b/c it was a requirement.

Do you have a sense of what it is that makes it difficult for you to retain the sequence of movements making up the form? Do you try to practice them, say, twenty minutes a day, three days a week, or something like that? For most people, that's enough to get the forms ingrained in your muscle memory... and it's only an hour a week, total.

[bigfootsquatch]

Kind of reminds me of what has happened to tai chi...nice competition forms that look somewhat nice at first, but can easily be picked up apart I hate to see taekwondo turned into a complete sport, but oh well I guess.

[AceHBK]

Do you have a sense of what it is that makes it difficult for you to retain the sequence of movements making up the form? Do you try to practice them, say, twenty minutes a day, three days a week, or something like that? For most people, that's enough to get the forms ingrained in your muscle memory... and it's only an hour a week, total.


You know, from day 1 I never cared for them. I found them as boring, rigid movements. Now I performed the to the best of my ability and put in the work to make them look good but after that they left my mind.

At the time my instructor realized this and was cool enough not to bust my chops about it but said for Black Belt test I would need to know all of them. To test for next belt we just had to do previous belt and current belt level.

I think it maybe more mental than anything but when I hear "forms" its like hearing a woman say to me "we need to talk".......I automatically know nothing good is gonna come from this.

[AceHBK]

I hate to see taekwondo turned into a complete sport, but oh well I guess.

I thought it already was. I mean for me I don't really seperate the sport and self defense aspect b/c the sport is still self defense.

I think that when people hear TKD they think "sport" and automatically assume that people who do sport TKD can't defend themselves.

[exile]

You know, from day 1 I never cared for them. I found them as boring, rigid movements. Now I performed the to the best of my ability and put in the work to make them look good but after that they left my mind.

At the time my instructor realized this and was cool enough not to bust my chops about it but said for Black Belt test I would need to know all of them. To test for next belt we just had to do previous belt and current belt level.

I think it maybe more mental than anything but when I hear "forms" its like hearing a woman say to me "we need to talk".......I automatically know nothing good is gonna come from this.

Ace... do yourself a favor. Go to this (http://www.iainabernethy.com/articles/article_home.asp) site and take a look at some of the articles on kata and bunkai (the analysis of kata movements as practical combat moves, linked together so as to force your assailant out of the fight—typically as a result of major body damage). We're not talking about sparring here, but streetfighting, an unprovoked attack by an untrained but violent and dangerour aggressor. Every single article on Abernethy's website is free, no strings attached... you just download them and read them! Consider the possibility that you haven't yet been shown the riches contained in the forms in terms of realistic fighting tactics guided by sound principles of close-quarter combat. You've got nothing to lose but your distaste for forms, after all, eh? :wink1:

[newGuy12]

Iain Abernethy is awesome! One of the brightest stars of today, in my estimation!

[foot2face]

...bunkai (the analysis of kata movements as practical combat moves, linked together so as to force your assailant out of the fight—typically as a result of major body damage). We're not talking about sparring here, but streetfighting, an unprovoked attack by an untrained but violent and dangerour aggressor.

That's interesting, Exile. The application of the poomse I was taught were almost exclusively geared towards trained attackers, particularly those who rely on different styles and methods.

[SageGhost83]

Self Defense applications...Isn't that what the Hoshinsul is for? Aren't the self defense and fighting techs already isolated for them to be worked individually? Maybe the orgs can get away with doing forms for pure demo purposes because there is already a component to the art that teaches brutal self defense and fighting techs. Very interesting topic.

[exile]

That's interesting, Exile. The application of the poomse I was taught were almost exclusively geared towards trained attackers, particularly those who rely on different styles and methods.

Really?? But would trained martial artists be the ones you'd be most likely to be in danger from? I tend to think of the real baddies as aggressive, violent bullies who wouldn't last long in most good schools...

The boon hae that I've learned, or worked out based on what I've learned, have been based on the assumption that you're probably going to be attacked by some untrained jerk with a lot of street experience who grabs you and throws a roundhouse punch to your face, or moves in to push you backwards and come in quickly, before you can recover, to punch you, again to the face, or kick you in the groin, or one or two other common attack-starters that Patrick McCarthy has catalogued as the most common `habitual acts of physical violence' initiate a fight. Most of the techs in the TKD hyungs I've studied, and the karate kata that are usually the source for the separate sequences in these hungs, are ideally suited to counterattacking just such initiations—initiations which aren't the kind of attack that a trained MAist would begin with.

I really don't worry about street violence from people who've put in the time, effort and discipline training MAs in a formal setting. The cocky bully, or insecure defective with a zero-length fuse, is the one I figure I'm going to be facing. It's not that these guys aren't dangerous—they are, very—but they don't approach a fight the way a MAist would, and training for another MAist isn't going to 'fit' what the actual street nasties are planning to do...

[foot2face]

Really?? But would trained martial artists be the ones you'd be most likely to be in danger from?
During times of war when you are most likely to face a trained enemy soldier, absolutely! Remember, TKD began as a military fighting system and situations such as this played an integral part in its development. Our “fighting” skill is very aggressive and dominating. It can easily overwhelm and incapacitate most unskilled and even many moderately skilled adversaries. Skilled adversaries, however, pose a threat, having the ability to neutralize our “fighting” skill, significantly reducing our ability to defend our self, leaving us vulnerable to their attack. Think of a Judoka closing the gap and grabbing you to setup a throw or a Karateka pining and trapping you as they proceed to pummel you with their free hand. Its this type of situation, being in your attackers “kill box”(a dangerous, vulnerably position were your attacker has decisive advantage), that our boon hae were meant to counter.

I tend to think of the real baddies as aggressive, violent bullies who wouldn't last long in most good schools…
That’s wishful thinking. My master would never allow us to underestimate an attacker by having such a low opinion of their ability. He taught us that haughtiness like that would get you in trouble. We trained as if every attacker had the will, ability and skill to cause us great harm.

The boon hae that I've learned, or worked out based on what I've learned, have been based on the assumption that you're probably going to be attacked by some untrained jerk with a lot of street experience … Most of the techs in the TKD hyungs I've studied, and the karate kata that are usually the source for the separate sequences in these hungs, are ideally suited to counterattacking just such initiations…
I think this is one of the many differences that separate JMAs and Kwan era TKDs from the post-Kwan ere TKD that was developed. We definitely have a differing perspective on our forms and their applications.

[Kacey]

That’s wishful thinking. My master would never allow us to underestimate an attacker by having such a low opinion of their ability. He taught us that haughtiness like that would get you in trouble. We trained as if every attacker had the will, ability and skill to cause us great harm.

Definitely. Expect the worst, hope for the best... on the other hand, unskilled opponents are often harder to predict.

Training should include a wide variety of possible scenarios - using techniques directly from forms, and then adapting them to a variety of possible uses.

[exile]

During times of war when you are most likely to face a trained enemy soldier, absolutely! Remember, TKD began as a military fighting system and situations such as this played an integral part in its development. Our “fighting” skill is very aggressive and dominating. It can easily overwhelm and incapacitate most unskilled and even many moderately skilled adversaries. Skilled adversaries, however, pose a threat, having the ability to neutralize our “fighting” skill, significantly reducing our ability to defend our self, leaving us vulnerable to their attack.

There's a sizable body of informed opinion which takes the karate-based arts to have originated as civilian fighting system, designed to protect people on the streets of their towns and villages. Iain Abernethy, who brilliantly combines MA history with bunkai methodology and realistic combat-simulation training, observes that


Karate is a civil tradition... the applications of the karate katas are for use against the violent and untrained, they are not for use against a skilled warrior on a battlefield or a participant in a sporting competition...

In a real fight, it is highly unlikely that the opponent will use techniques such as Oi-Zuki or Mawashigeri. Karate is a civil tradition and consequently the katas contain very few techniques for dealing with teh skilled combinations of a trained fighter. Kata is all about defeating an attacker in a real civilian encounter... as martial artists, we spend a great deal of time practising with, and against, practitioners of the same discipline. As a result, boxers get good at fighting boxers, judoka get good at fighting other judoka and karateka get good at fighting other karateka. The techniques within kata are designed for use against the violent and untrained, not other martial artists. Kata techniques most often deal with wild swings, grabs, tackles, etc. Any kata application that is interpreted as a defense against a lunging punch or other such karate technique is incorrect.


(Bunkai-Jutsu: the Practical Application of Karate Kata 2002, 49, 52-53)). Look at the 'family' CMA systems, for example; again, these weren't designed for military conditions, but for application to personal violence in civilian situations. TKD, coming from Okinawa via Japan, reflected the thinking of people like Matsumura, Azato and Itosu, who were looking at civilian self defense exclusively—there was no military context for the Okinawans, after all, except as draftees into the Japanese army. And when Funakoshi brought karate to Japan, it wasn't looked upon as a military combative system by the Defense and Education ministries, but rather as a kind of group calisthenic for instilling discipline (which was one of the major reasons for the adoption of kihon line drills as the preferred method of training, something absent from the Okinawan training methods of Funakoshi's predecessors on the islands).

It's certainly true that TKD had an important connection to military application. But the work of Burdick and others who have studied the history of TKD in the Korean War era suggest strongly that the North Koreans were not nearly as adept, or interested in, martial arts as the South Koreans, for ideological reasons among others. Nor were the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong in the Vietnam War; the latter feared the ROK troops precisely because they had little in the way of close-quarters empty-hand combat experience to counter the well-trained Korean forces with. And as Simon O'Neil notes in his Combat TKD description of the military applications of TKD, these were in effect intensified and 'stripped down' versions of the standard 'civilian' TKD techiques that had been brought back by the Kwan founders from their training in Japan. The ROK forces were not facing trained martial artists on the battlefield; the Okinawans had not designed TKD for use on the battlefield. The assumption was that your attacker was not going to be a soldier, but a thug, of whom, apparently, there were plenty, both in 19th c. Shuri and 20th c. Seoul. This is a critical point: neither General Choi's Chang Hon tuls nor the Song Moo Kwan hyungs (or any of the other 'original five' Kwan forms) were defined in terms of a situation in which your attacker was going to be using the same techniques that you were. As the half-dozen books on my desk offering alternative analyses of the Pinan/Pyung-Ahn forms make clear, the attacker envisaged in these forms was not a karateka or TKDist. Grab and punch, grab and head-butt, shove and kick, shoot in and tackle... those are the kinds of attacks that these forms are brilliant at stopping dead in their tracks. A trained combatant isn't going to go in with a shirt-grab and a roundhouse to the head. Would you?


That’s wishful thinking. My master would never allow us to underestimate an attacker by having such a low opinion of their ability.

Wishful thinking? Not likely—an experienced streetfighter is as dangerous an adversary as you're going to encounter. I've emphasized in my previous post that these people are dangerous. They have a few basic techniques that they use and are very good at. Their lack of training is exactly that—they have not done what MAists call training; instead, they gain experience by fighting, no rules, except do whatever you need to do to destroy the person you're attacking. Why did you assume that I was dismissing the danger such people represent?


He taught us that haughtiness like that would get you in trouble. We trained as if every attacker had the will, ability and skill to cause us great harm.

Skill, yes, and will—but the methods such people employ, and your random street bully, are distinctly different from what you are going to get from a trained MAist. This was my point about Patrick McCarthy's work over the past several decades. Bill Burgar, in his book Five Years, One Kata gives an excellent summary of McCarthy's findings about the rather small set of attack initiation techniques employed in streetfights (based on a variety of data sets, including police reports, hospital records and criminology research); there's also a good discussion in Titchen's new book, Heian Flow System: effective karate kata bunkai. It's very clear from these studies that the half-dozen or so stock initiations to street attacks do not involve martial arts techniques, and statistically, by far the most common is a grab/swinging punch combination. The bunkai for most of the classic kata and TKD hyungs that I'm familiar invariably contain one or two sequences which encode an effective response to just this combination.

I'm still at a loss to figure out how you find my characterization of this most-common set of street attacks to reflect 'haughtiness'. 'Untrained' isn't a judgment of dangerousness or effectiveness; it refers rather to the kinds of actions that, 9 times out of 10, you're going to find yourself facing in a bar or street confrontation with an aggressive antagonist. The numbers, and their sources, are in the references I've given, and Patrick McCarthy, who is the pioneer of this line of research, happens to be one of our members. If you're skeptical of the data I've cited, or of his results, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to discuss his 30-odd years of work in this area with you.


I think this is one of the many differences that separate JMAs and Kwan era TKDs from the post-Kwan ere TKD that was developed. We definitely have a differing perspective on our forms and their applications.


That's certainly possible. But I have never been threatened, or attacked, by a martial artists. My relatively few encounters with street violence, in the rather violent New York City of the 1960s and after, were with street punks. I think you could actually do some interesting research polling members of MT about situations in which they had to defend themselves, and how often it was the case that they were attacked out of the blue by punks using sequences recognizable from kumite or randoori.

[foot2face]

There's a sizable body of informed opinion which takes the karate-based arts to have originated as civilian fighting system, designed to protect people on the streets of their towns and villages. Look at the 'family' CMA systems, for example; these weren't designed for military conditions.
This is true, but as I’ve mentioned before, the TKD I was taught traces it roots back to the merging of the Kwans that began in the military. The experience gained in the military had a significant impact on the system. Strong ties between MA and the military was not unheard of in the region. Many JMAs, the various Jujutsu styles for instance, were definitely geared towards militaristic applications and had many techniques that dealt with skilled attacker, such as weapon disarming on the battlefield. Now I’m not fond of typing so I strive to be succinct with my post. Unfortunately I’m not always successful and in my brevity I often loose clarity. I shouldn’t have given the impression that the expectation of meeting a skilled adversary on the battlefield was the only factor that led to many of the applications of our forms being geared toward use against trained attackers. It was one of several. It also wasn’t a day one change to the system, rather it was an understanding that was developed over the years. One of the other factors that led to this approach to boon hae was exposure to different systems and methods. While serving in the military MAist were first exposed to the skills of the various Kwans, later they were exposed to the combative systems employed by foreign soldiers, for example while training with American G.I.s they came across boxing, wrestling and Judo(which was already popular in Korea and had influenced TKD particularly through JidoKwan which in its early days had students who also trained in Judo, giving them insight on how to apply their striking system against grapplers). Early TKDist understood the difficulty that can be posed by facing some trained in a different systems. It was this that led to the belief that if TKD was going to be a complete system it had to take into account various techniques and tactics of other styles might use against it. My master use to tell us that “if your TKD only worked against other TKDist(a shortcoming common to many traditionally inspired MAs) then it is useless”, there was a huge emphasis on being able deal with any adversary that came our way, be they untrained or highly skilled.

But the work of Burdick and others who have studied the history of TKD in the Korean War era suggest strongly that the North Koreans were not nearly as adept, or interested in, martial arts as the South Koreans, for ideological reasons among others. Nor were the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong in the Vietnam War; the latter feared the ROK troops precisely because they had little in the way of close-quarters empty-hand combat experience to counter the well-trained Korean forces with.
It is my understanding that the South Koreans made many of their early military preparations on facing a military similar to the Japanese. While not every Japanese soldier was a skilled MAist, many could be found within their ranks, especially among the officer corp. The Koreans new that if the Japanese attempted to occupied their country again at least some of the invading force would be well versed in H2H combat. The North Koreans may not have been as adept or interested in MAs as the South Koreans during the time of the Korean War but they certainly have become so since then, and the South Korean military has long been aware of the H2H prowess of the DPRK troops. I’m not so sure about the claims made about the NVA and Viet Cong. I’ve herd many accounts of them being tough, scrappy SOBs, and particularly skilled with knives. I’ve also come across accounts that they may have had Chinese H2H instructors similar to how the South Vietnamese had some South Korean instructors. The NVA and Viet Cong aggressively employed a tactic of close-in engagement in order to mitigate American artillery and air power. This “up close and personal” fighting actually spurred interest in our own military to increase the H2H training of our troops. It stands to reason that since the NVA relied heavily on close-in combat and were regrettably quite effective with it, that they had ability and training beyond just shooting their AK47s.

…but the methods such people employ, and your random street bully, are distinctly different from what you are going to get from a trained MAist.
Yes, exactly! Which is why it behooves a serious MAist to know how to apply their skill against a random street bully as well as another trained MAist.

But I have never been threatened, or attacked, by a martial artists. My relatively few encounters with street violence, in the rather violent New York City of the 1960s and after, were with street punks. I think you could actually do some interesting research polling members of MT about situations in which they had to defend themselves, and how often it was the case that they were attacked out of the blue by punks using sequences recognizable from kumite or randoori.
Then consider yourself lucky. Not every baddy is a skilled MAist, but their has been a huge explosion in the practice of MAs over the past few decades and sports like wrestling and boxing have always been popular. It has gotten even more dangerous with the rise MMA. School are opening all over the place offering training in a full contact spot that incorporates Boxing, MT, wrestling and BJJ(a dangerous mix). I’ve come across a few MMA (as well other styles) thugs in my time. Its been my experience that thugs with training are among the first to step up and cause trouble, wanting to prove that their a real badass. I agree, it would be interesting to poll MartialTalk members.

[YoungMan]

Exactly. In fact, I just finished writing a paper for a class I am taking that deals with TMA and at-risk populations. One of the things I mention is a study that shows that styles like boxing and MMA are very dangerous for delinquents to study because of the fact that they do not include philosophy, meditation, etiquette, and the responsibility that comes with being a trained fighter. They train to dominate and win, and as such look at fighting as a means to an end (victory). Certainly not what you would want someone who already has rage and aggression issues to learn.

[exile]

There's a sizable body of informed opinion which takes the karate-based arts to have originated as civilian fighting system, designed to protect people on the streets of their towns and villages. Look at the 'family' CMA systems, for example; these weren't designed for military conditions.

...While serving in the military MAist were first exposed to the skills of the various Kwans, later they were exposed to the combative systems employed by foreign soldiers, for example while training with American G.I.s they came across boxing, wrestling and Judo(which was already popular in Korea and had influenced TKD particularly through JidoKwan which in its early days had students who also trained in Judo, giving them insight on how to apply their striking system against grapplers). Early TKDist understood the difficulty that can be posed by facing some trained in a different systems. It was this that led to the belief that if TKD was going to be a complete system it had to take into account various techniques and tactics of other styles might use against it. My master use to tell us that “if your TKD only worked against other TKDist(a shortcoming common to many traditionally inspired MAs) then it is useless”, there was a huge emphasis on being able deal with any adversary that came our way, be they untrained or highly skilled.

I understand this, but the question is the relationship between the kinds of training in H2H combat soldiers receive who anticipate that they may need to do that kind of fighting, as vs. what you can expect to encounter in a barfight or a random assault on the street. I'm aware this is a question of fact. But it has been studied in considerable detail, using a variety of data sources, as I suggested in my earlier post. There is a solid body of evidence that the most common attacks, the `habitual acts of physical violence' as McCarthy has labelled them, have been fairly stable in type over the past several decades, as far back as the data allow you to go, and that they consist of a half dozen or so methods of attack which are not what a trained MAist would deliver. I've provided the sources for this work; its documentation is readily available.. what more can I do? The nature of the evidence is wide-ranging and yields consistent findings, and I find it plausible. I don't know what else I can add...




But the work of Burdick and others who have studied the history of TKD in the Korean War era suggest strongly that the North Koreans were not nearly as adept, or interested in, martial arts as the South Koreans, for ideological reasons among others. Nor were the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong in the Vietnam War; the latter feared the ROK troops precisely because they had little in the way of close-quarters empty-hand combat experience to counter the well-trained Korean forces with.

It is my understanding that the South Koreans made many of their early military preparations on facing a military similar to the Japanese. While not every Japanese soldier was a skilled MAist, many could be found within their ranks, especially among the officer corp. The Koreans new that if the Japanese attempted to occupied their country again at least some of the invading force would be well versed in H2H combat. The North Koreans may not have been as adept or interested in MAs as the South Koreans during the time of the Korean War but they certainly have become so since then, and the South Korean military has long been aware of the H2H prowess of the DPRK troops.

I've no doubt that that's true. But the 'military' phase of the development of TKD for public access was at the time of the Korean War, no? That was what Gen. Choi taught and promoted (in part via the Chang Hon tuls), in opposition to the sport initiative which was gaining traction during the following decade. Afterwards, the time you're talking about, is the time during which the official Korean government agenda—as expressed via the 'official' curricula of the KKW and the heavy promotion of the WTF vision of Olympic sparring—was anything but favorable to hardcore combat use of TKD. Just how widely has the TKD you're talking about been disseminated outside of the Korean military? Do you know what it consists of in detail? Is there any actual documentation for it? I'm not asking these as rhetorical questions; I'm very much interested in the answers.

But regardless of the answer, the issue is what you are likely to facing on the street. More on this below...


I’m not so sure about the claims made about the NVA and Viet Cong. I’ve herd many accounts of them being tough, scrappy SOBs, and particularly skilled with knives. I’ve also come across accounts that they may have had Chinese H2H instructors similar to how the South Vietnamese had some South Korean instructors. The NVA and Viet Cong aggressively employed a tactic of close-in engagement in order to mitigate American artillery and air power. This “up close and personal” fighting actually spurred interest in our own military to increase the H2H training of our troops. It stands to reason that since the NVA relied heavily on close-in combat and were regrettably quite effective with it, that they had ability and training beyond just shooting their AK47s.

Well, here's what I know about the VC/NVA response to the ROK troop's CQ unarmed combat skills. In July of 1966, a VC field command directive was captured by US troops which contained the instructions: Contact with Koreans is to be avoided at all costs unless a Viet Cong victory is 100% certain. Never defy Korean soldiers without discrimination, even when unarmed, for they are all well trained with Taekwondo. (Anslow, Taekwon-do Hae Sul: Real Applications to the ITF Patterns, 2006: Diggory Press, UK, xvii.) To me, that says pretty much everything that needs saying about how the VC viewed their own empty-hand competence relative to that of the Korean infantry. And at the Battle of Tra Binh Dong in 1967, in ferocious hand-to-hand fighting in which rifles and bayonets were not usable under the trench warfare conditions of the battle, the fifteen-to-one mortality rate among the NVA relative to the ROK Marine defenders makes it pretty clear who held the hex cards on whom—especially given that the South Korean troops were seriously outnumbered. Again, Anslow's book contains descriptions of the battle and the crucial role of ROK H2H superiority from several of the officers who served there, and reprints a detailed account of the fighting in the U.S. Marine Corps Gazette. I've yet to see any indication, even a hint, that either the VC or the NV were remotely in the same league as the ROK in that War (any more than the North had been, a decade and a half earlier).

The relevance of this is that, clearly, the South Koreans were training a very high-intensity destructive, killing version of TKD; but I don't see any evidence that they were training in the expectation that they were going to be meeting comparably trained MA-savvy enemies. What they were training for was close-quarter combat against an enemy with weapons, where they themselves were out of ammo or separated from their weapons—the worst case, from a soldier's point of view. Obviously, under those circumstances, they had better be able to kill an enemy soldier as fast as possible, but that's not at all the same thing as training to fight a comparably trained empty-hand expert fighter on the battlefield!




…but the methods such people employ, and your random street bully, are distinctly different from what you are going to get from a trained MAist.

Yes, exactly! Which is why it behooves a serious MAist to know how to apply their skill against a random street bully as well as another trained MAist.

But... that's exactly what I've been saying, f2f. When I refer to an untrained attacker, that's who I'm talking about—the 'random street bully' who is still, statistically, much more likely to be a violent thug than a technically adept MAist, judging by the work I cited earlier by people who actually study patterns of street attacks and civil violence.



But I have never been threatened, or attacked, by a martial artists. My relatively few encounters with street violence, in the rather violent New York City of the 1960s and after, were with street punks. I think you could actually do some interesting research polling members of MT about situations in which they had to defend themselves, and how often it was the case that they were attacked out of the blue by punks using sequences recognizable from kumite or randoori.

Then consider yourself lucky. Not every baddy is a skilled MAist, but their has been a huge explosion in the practice of MAs over the past few decades and sports like wrestling and boxing have always been popular. It has gotten even more dangerous with the rise MMA. School are opening all over the place offering training in a full contact spot that incorporates Boxing, MT, wrestling and BJJ(a dangerous mix).

I'm lucky, yes, f2f, but not for that reason. When I was an undergraduate in university the common attack pattern was for a couple of guys to go after someone, snap off a car radio antennæ, and slice his face into ribbons. I travelled armed with all manner of weapon and sometimes had to use them, but I was never dealing with anything as innocent as a low roundhouse to the side of my knee joint or a spearing elbow strike to my face. These guys carried K-55s and I did too. These people meant business, and they were all over the place in NY in those days.


I’ve come across a few MMA (as well other styles) thugs in my time. Its been my experience that thugs with training are among the first to step up and cause trouble, wanting to prove that their a real badass. I agree, it would be interesting to poll MartialTalk members.


Maybe times have indeed changed and the majority of street attackers have MA experience—though the various databases on patterns of street violence that I've referred to several times already make me very doubtful. Sure, you need to know how to deal with someone who's going to shoot in to take you down, but that's always been one of the main attack initiators. Still, my guess—and I suspect that this is the main point of disagreement between us—is that the main thing that you still have to worry about, statistically, is the sucker punch, the grab-and-roundhouse, maybe the grab-pull-headbutt in some places, and a few other classics—at least in 1-on-1s. You're still much more likely to be looking at these than at a trained (or even semi-trained) technically oriented MAists, is my guess. And the original point is what the bunkai themselves are preparing you for. Again, my guess is that its the techs I've mentioned, rather than the profile you alluded to above.

This might be worth starting a new thread about, definitely...


Exactly. In fact, I just finished writing a paper for a class I am taking that deals with TMA and at-risk populations. One of the things I mention is a study that shows that styles like boxing and MMA are very dangerous for delinquents to study because of the fact that they do not include philosophy, meditation, etiquette, and the responsibility that comes with being a trained fighter. They train to dominate and win, and as such look at fighting as a means to an end (victory). Certainly not what you would want someone who already has rage and aggression issues to learn.

Sure, we don't want thugs and sociopaths to be MA adepts. The question is, just how likely is that, compared with the likelihood of thugs and sociopaths attacking you who aren't MA adepts? You have a streetfight situation, reported in some detail in your local newspaper. Cover up the story with your hand and guess: was the attacker using MMA, boxing, wrestling, judo/jiujustsu or other techs of the sort you mention? Or did he do a shove/groin kick or grab-and-swing? What, in other words, is the relative likelihood of what kind of attack?

As I mentioned in my reply to f2f, the people who worried me the most when I lived in NYC in the '60s didn't train anything; they just did a lot of the most brutal violence you can imagine outside of war conditions. Their descendents are with us still, and from the evidence I've seen cited, the great majority of them are not trained in MA technique sets. They're plenty dangerous even without that.

[foot2face]

Again Exile, I fear you are misunderstanding me. My system doesn't train with the sole expectation of encountering a trained attacker. Recall how I wrote that many of the boon hae to my poomse are geared towards countering techniques and tactics used by practitioners of different styles but that our "fighting" skill, not our SD/anti-smothering/anti-grappling techniques found in the forms, is considered to be the more determinative of the two aspects of H2H and is much more emphasized. Our "fighting" skill addresses many of the concerns you wrote of and would be used to deal with the type of attacker you described. Our understanding of an attacker is very similar to yours but in addition to that we also take into account common methods used by skilled practitioners of different systems.

[exile]

Again Exile, I fear you are misunderstanding me. My system doesn't train with the sole expectation of encountering a trained attacker.

Well, maybe part of the problem is that the discussion has been at a very general level so far. I had the impression, from your initial reaction to my post about boon hae aimed at non-MA-trained attackers, and the emphasis you were putting on what sounded MMA-type training amongst street nasties, that this was the major problem.

Maybe we could make the discussion more concrete....


Recall how I wrote that many of the boon hae to my poomse are geared towards countering techniques and tactics used by practitioners of different styles but that our "fighting" skill, not our SD/anti-smothering/anti-grappling techniques found in the forms, is considered to be the more determinative of the two aspects of H2H and is much more emphasized. Our "fighting" skill addresses many of the concerns you wrote of and would be used to deal with the type of attacker you described. Our understanding of an attacker is very similar to yours but [B]in addition to that we also take into account common methods used by skilled practitioners of different systems.[/B[

This is where an instance of the kind of extended boon hae you're referring to would be very good to have. If you pick a TKD form out of the air that I happen to know, I could probably come up with some applications for at least a couple of the subsequences in it, after a bit of thinking, at least something to experiment with with a training partner. But the applications would all be in response to the kind of attacks I alluded to; I'd probably have a hard time thinking of applications in response to a trained MAists attacks, because while I have a fair idea of how another TKDist will approach me in a sparring situation, I can't really picture what they would do if they were planning to attack me with the same intent as a mugger, or just a violent defenctive. Can you walk me through an example of the kind of case you're talking about?

[foot2face]

This is where an instance of the kind of extended boon hae you're referring to would be very good to have. If you pick a TKD form out of the air that I happen to know, I could probably come up with some applications for at least a couple of the subsequences in it, after a bit of thinking, at least something to experiment with with a training partner. But the applications would all be in response to the kind of attacks I alluded to; I'd probably have a hard time thinking of applications in response to a trained MAists attacks, because while I have a fair idea of how another TKDist will approach me in a sparring situation, I can't really picture what they would do if they were planning to attack me with the same intent as a mugger, or just a violent defenctive. Can you walk me through an example of the kind of case you're talking about?
I’m short on time right now and can’t offer you post the attention it deserves but here are a few excerpts from several other post I have written, hopefully they will provided at least some of the information you are requesting.

My master used to tell us that if our TKD only worked on other TKDist then it was useless. He also held BBs in Hapkido and Judo and would incorporate their techniques into our training, not to also make us proficient grapplers but to challenge our TKD skills. We learned how to use our TKD against someone who was trying to throw, lock or take us down. Long after I left my school I continued training like this, frequently sparring with practitioners of other styles, not to learn their techniques but to gain better understanding of my own. I've often felt that one of the most common shortcomings of MA training is that one usually only gains experience in dealing with a practitioner of the same system.


We relied on our boon hae to counter techniques or tactics that would hinder our “instinctive and spontaneous eruption of aggression”. They were generally geared towards anti-smothering/anti-grappling and once executed would allow us to commence with our striking. For example, while defending myself the average punch or kick directed towards me would be instinctively blocked or evaded, and have little to no effect on my ability to attack, however if I am smothered or grabbed my ability to effectively strike is significantly reduced. Some of these techniques or tactics may completely neutralize my striking, forcing me to immediately counter it or fall victim to my attacker. Lets say I’m attacked, I immediately land a kick to my attackers low region. They lurch forward, exposing the back of their head, as I deliver the blow they lunge forward and grab hold evading the strike and locking me with double under-hooks(a very common response from a skilled grappler). This is a bad position, at this proximity my striking is virtually ineffective and if I don’t counter this technique quickly I’m likely to be jostled to the ground and put on my back. An extremely bad position, at least for me. There are applications from my poomse that can counter this technique, breaking the hold and repelling my attacker, allowing me to continue to strike if they are not already incapacitated.


For example, lets say an inside-striker (think Wing Tsun) gets the drop on you, they square you of and take your center, then proceed to drive you back with a vicious barrage of chain punches. You’re in their “kill box” and your “fighting” skills are of little to no use. The kicking, striking, blocking and evasive footwork you normally relay on to dominate you adversary are of little help to you because of the proximity of your attacker, your vulnerable position and the fact that you are being driven backwards. This is the time to use one of the appropriate boon hae from our poomse.

Also, did you happen to read the tread I started a while ago entitled My Understanding of the Tae Geuk Poomse (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54607). In it I describe several simple applications of the forms, perhaps it will help you to begin to understand my approach.

Well, maybe part of the problem is that the discussion has been at a very general level so far. …Maybe we could make the discussion more concrete.…
Yes. We definitely need to start a new thread focusing on this discussion.
Until then,
Be Well -F2F

[exile]

I’m short on time right now and can’t offer you post the attention it deserves but here are a few excerpts from several other post I have written, hopefully they will provided at least some of the information you are requesting.

Thanks, f2f, that's much appreciated! :)


Also, did you happen to read the tread I started a while ago entitled My Understanding of the Tae Geuk Poomse (http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54607). In it I describe several simple applications of the forms, perhaps it will help you to begin to understand my approach.

I did read that thread, but since we do the Palgwes in my school, not the Taegeuks, it was involved a bit of a stretch to visualize the applications, given that I don't have 'muscle feel' for the moves. I'll revisit it from this angle...




Yes. We definitely need to start a new thread focusing on this discussion.
Until then,
Be Well -F2F


And you too, f2f!

[Laurentkd]

Bump!

So has anyone heard anything else about these forms? Are the actually being implemented on some level or did we all just get worked up over nothing?

[scstover]

This form is remarkably flowing and nonsymetrically

[turtle]

So has anyone heard anything else about these forms? Are the actually being implemented on some level or did we all just get worked up over nothing?

Last I heard they were in sort of study period where feedback was being gathered (not sure from whom) and the forms refined. If I remember correctly, it was going to be a some time, maybe a year or more, before the forms would be implemented. Sorry, wish I could find the article I'm thinking of but a search isn't turning up anything. If I find it, I'll post more specifically.

[Laurentkd]

Last I heard they were in sort of study period where feedback was being gathered (not sure from whom) and the forms refined. If I remember correctly, it was going to be a some time, maybe a year or more, before the forms would be implemented. Sorry, wish I could find the article I'm thinking of but a search isn't turning up anything. If I find it, I'll post more specifically.

Thanks Turtle, that would be great!

[turtle]

Found the article this morning - it was in the last edition of Taekwondo People. At the end of the article about the debut of the new poomse it says they'll be introduced and spread internationally over the next 2-3 years before officially being used for competition.

[MSKBBSLINKARD]

That first one looks like pretty long. Where did you come across this information and for what ranks are these new forms supposed to be taught to?

[Twin Fist]

The first form:
way to long, needs to be broken in half.
Too many "sport only" elements
great kicking, but see above
prob a 2nd Dan level form, maybe 3rd or 4th

Second form:
I liked this one a lot better, and I could see the SD applications more readily.
looked very balanced, nice kicking combinations
Looked like a red belt level form

[SageGhost83]

Going back over it, I see what Exile is saying - is there an underlying "combat logic" to it, or is it just there because it looks good and it will score more points in competition? You can't just throw a bunch of techs together and call it a form - there has to be a specific combat purpose behind the tech. What is the principle that it is expressing? What part of "the fight" is it addressing? Does it have depth, or is it a shallow movement that is there just for the sake of being there? An "empty" form is not very useful.

[britcanbulldogtkd]

I am very interested in what is for use of a better term a split between the traditional forms and what ppl have said is a form to attract the sparring element and to demonstrate what i would call an olympic promotion. I want to take it beyond the idea of new forms.
The sport side of TKD as always been there I remember years and years ago when the only hogul you could get was made by a company called bear and were nicknamed "bear pads" well that what i think i remember.
The IOC making taekwondo a featured sport as part of the games is dictating the changes within the political bodies and there is a general determination to make TKD more exciting to the general population
To those who have watched the sport grow into what it is today will know that the point system as changed "1st blood" no longer ends a fight. etc etc
When we go to the regional fights and see the beginners compete its all legs fists flying. Only 10% of these actually land and make contact and its all pretty "gung ho" because the fighters are flooded with adrenalin and nerves. Then we see the black belt fighters (poetry in motion) the shots are picked and its not just a physical battle but also a mental one. Almost like a game of chess or another stratigic game. Why so stratigic? Because by now TKD is not only physical but also mental, Now for me or anyother true martial artist this battle of physical and mental harmony should be great to watch and even better to judge or referee. But to the likes of the IOC or Major sponsors of equipment or sports networks who pay big money. "It aint that attractive to the mighty dollar." so to speak I love the sport side of taekwondo as well as the traditional side of it and in a perfect world both would work side by side but there is a huge investment into the sport side of it and that brings in good money to the WTF/KKW. So if lets say the IOC threaten to remove it from the games cos its not attractive to the masses or some tv sports channel says no more coverage cos its not getting the figures. What would you do ? say "thats ok pull the plug" or would but look at a better way of marketing it

Again its long winded but i value everybody opinion on this

[IcemanSK]

According to these youtube posts, this form is for "Youth" (40 years old & younger) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhemsgRYjiI

And this for "masters" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8HSUyVpN-A

Too bad that doesn't clear up anything. I love the fact that I'm still a youth, tho:boing1:

[IcemanSK]

Well it's been more than a year since these poomsae were introduced. There hasn't been any buzz or even talk about them that I've heard. They weren't talked about (nevermind performed) at the Hanmadang 2008 in Anaheim, CA this year.

Has anyone heard anything about them, beyond these videos?

I hope they are forgotten idea for the KKW.

[YoungMan]

Please realize, as I've mentioned before forms incorporate many more elements than simply what works for self defense. And self defense is much more than just knowing where to hit and with what technique.
Having said that, I think the new KKW forms are a good start to showcasing all the elements of modern Taekwondo. I agree that one of the forms incorporates too many sport-like techniques. But it is a start.