Hell has actually frozen over—an accurate, well-founded dojang website TKD history!

[exile]

It's a great article, no doubt, but I'm frankly surprised at the number of spelling mistakes? You would have thought someone would spell check a document like that before posting it up on a University website

Hmmm, I didn't notice those mistakes... read through it too quickly, probably and mentally corrected them as I went, which I also do with my own work, making me maybe the worst proofreader there ever was...

Notice that he actively solicits corrections and tells us how to get in touch with him. I'll try to query him on the Lee/Choi matter that we were discussing above.

 

[terryl965]

I'll try to query him on the Lee/Choi matter that we were discussing above.

Exile I have ask my GM Kim to tell me about the commection between these two when he gets back to me I will state what he writes.

 

[YoungMan]

If Taekkyon were a Korean recreation or "game", why would there be documentation as to who practiced and who didn't? Extensive school records are a Japanese martial art custom. As such, it would seem to me that keeping records as to who studied under whom woudn't really matter.
And it can be argued that modern Tae Kwon Do bears no relationship to Japanese Karate, except for the forms, which are a holdout from those days, and really should be updated/replaced.
The impression I get is that one's version of the origin of Taekwondo depends greatly on the Kwan in which one belonged. A Songmookwan or Jidokwan student will get a different version than a Chung Do Kwan student because their organization has a different history.
One thing GGM Lee was not was a liar. If it is claimed, or he claimed to have Taekkyon training, even if modern TK organizations don't believe it, I'm inclined to believe it, because the techniques I learned and their methods of execution are very similar to what I've seen TK students do. And this goes back to my earliest days of practice.
Maybe people would believe me if I were a British karate writer.

 

[Sukerkin]

In answer to your last, no, Youngman, that would make very little difference to how you perceive you are being received.

The problem lies in a general sense that you are presenting a view based on 'religious zeal' rather than a foundation of research. Forgive me for the implied rudeness but it is as if you have been given a 'snapshot' of what the accepted history can be by your instructor and will not now countenance anything which gainsays that view.

As a post script, before you flay the skin from my bones, I personally have no investment either way in this argument. I don't practice the art and never will. Indeed, before the beneficial and scholarly influence of the ilk of Exile, you don't want to know the depths of scorn I held for TKD and all it's flavours.

All of which rambling can be precised to say that I have no bias on the matter and would respectfully suggest that striving for the same would serve you well in any debate such as this one.

 

[exile]

If Taekkyon were a Korean recreation or "game", why would there be documentation as to who practiced and who didn't? Extensive school records are a Japanese martial art custom. As such, it would seem to me that keeping records as to who studied under whom woudn't really matter.

The Human Cultural Asset himself, Song Duk Ki,declared so by the Korean governement for single-handedly keeping Taekyon alive during the occupation, has stated in his book, the sole firsthand source on 20th century taekkyon, that it was a game. Read page 8 on this, YM. It's there. I've pointed this out to you before, I believe, and am going to try one more time: it's in Song Duk Ki's book. And if you then want to tell us you know better than the guy who was at one point the only person practicing the taekkyon that was taught and practiced in the 19th century, by all means do so! :lol:

Extensive school records are a school custom. Teachers keep records. The people who taught taekkyon kept those records. Period. Stuart Culin, the leading American ethnologist of indigenous sports and games in the 19th century, the Curator of the Brooklyn Museum and author of a book on Korean Games, published in 1895, identifies taekkyon as a competitive village game played at festivals and special matches on which people gambled on their own village. He was there, he described the game in great detail, his description matches photographic evidence of early 1960s taekkyon as executed by Song Duk Ki himself, and as the Taekyon Research Association describes it today. You are telling us that you know better than a trained 19th century descriptive ethnographer who studied Korean games what was and was not a Korean game? Again, you're welcome to tell us that. There were records kept, the Taekyon Research Association worked out lineages and concluded that none of the TKD pioneers was connected to any of the known Taekyon teachers. If you want to tell us that you know better than they do who studied with whom, well, as I say....

And it can be argued that modern Tae Kwon Do bears no relationship to Japanese Karate, except for the forms, which are a holdout from those days, and really should be updated/replaced.

It can indeed be argued, with however no support. Every single kihon tech in TKD—up blocks, down blocks, X-blocks, pressing blocks, hikite retraction, backfist, hammerfist, ridgehand, elbow strikes of all kinds, palm heel strike, and the whole kicking repertoire—roundhouse, side, front, snap kicks and all the rest of the basic technique set—are there in Shotokan/Shudokan karate. The unbalancing throws, grabs and lower-body attacks, on feet and legs, the mid-body pushing kicks while holding the opponent with both hands to topple them over, and the rest of the techniques that Culin and many others have described, are missing completely from 'modern TKD'. Robert Young's and Mark Pederson's excellent, detailed surveys of the technical content of taekyon make it clear that there is no technical connection between TKD and this village kicking game at all, and the virtual intertranslatablility of the TKD and Shotokan technique set show exactly what the relationship is—as would be expected when every single orginal Kwan founder attained dan rank in one of the Japanese karate styles, apart from Hwang Kee. So argue away, YM.

The impression I get is that one's version of the origin of Taekwondo depends greatly on the Kwan in which one belonged. A Songmookwan or Jidokwan student will get a different version than a Chung Do Kwan student because their organization has a different history.
One thing GGM Lee was not was a liar. If it is claimed, or he claimed to have Taekkyon training, even if modern TK organizations don't believe it, I'm inclined to believe it, because the techniques I learned and their methods of execution are very similar to what I've seen TK students do.

You have seen a TK which was virtually created from scratch in the shadow of a massive, giant national martial art, declared so by Syngman Rhee and his deposer/successor, Gen. Park. And you think that what you see is the taekkyon that Culin described more than 110 years ago and that Son Duk Ki was practicing in old age before those guys were born? :lol:

And this goes back to my earliest days of practice.
Maybe people would believe me if I were a British karate writer.

I think they'd be more likely to believe you if you were to familiarize yourself—as Sukerkin has diplomatically, but pointedly, suggested to you—with even a small bit of the rather enormous modern critical scholarship on the issue (some of which I've been pointing you to for months now, and which you appear to continue to disregard pretty much entirely). Maybe you should consider that possibility, eh?

I believe his Ph.D. is from my alma mater, Syracuse University.

Interesting, Arni—I had the impression it was from somewhere nearby (thinking as a New Yorker... you can't ever get it out of your blood!)

Exile I have ask my GM Kim to tell me about the commection between these two when he gets back to me I will state what he writes.

Thanks, Terry—it'll be good to get that straightened out.

 

[ellies]

I agree, and I think more of this will start coming out as people confront the increasingly evident connection between, on the one hand, the 'party line' fabricated histories and deliberate revisionism sponsored by the ROK and its sports-agency mouthpieces, and on the other hand, the movement to drive TKD to Olympic status.

Some recently emerging evidence, including Son Duk Ki's own book, and work by the Korean Taekyon people themselves, provide strong new support for Dohrenwend's conclusions about the factors affecting the development of TKD. I'm going to try to circulate some of this material as soon as I get some time, because it has important lessons about the way in which romantic yearnings and heroic aspirations can be recruited by cynical realists on behalf of their own agendas—something that goes on not just in other MAs, but in many other reals of life as well...

What a lot of people need to hear, I think, is that TKD is fine as a combat-effective MA, if it's taught from that angle and trained from that angle. Yes, it may be new... but honest histories of karate and many other 'traditional' empty-hand martial arts will tell you the same thing about those arts! We don't need a technical lineage that recedes into the mists of legend in order to have thoroughly effective fighting systems. The people who push these spurious histories are, I think, trading on people's insecurities about this particular point.

I am glad there are people like you to help get the MA back to where it was. I studied under a ROK Marine and he alway said they were putting too much emphasis on the sport aspect of this great art. So please continue to do your thing!!

 

[Steel Tiger]

What an excellent document (e-document?). What need does TKD have for ancient history when it has all the splendour of its actual history? There are heroes, villains, there are Machiavellian manipulations, and secret plots. It may only be 65 years old but it is grand. True, it is only the perspective of one kwan but it is the oldest of the kwans so has had members present for all the developments of TKD.

I am astounded by the honesty of the history. One part in particular emphasised this for me, the discussion of the term Tae Kwon Do.

Although the term Tae Kwon Do is of very recent origin, there is still some confusion as to when it was first used and by whom. Grand Master Yeon Hee Park says that at a meeting of Korean martial arts masters in April 11, 1955, (one source [SIZE=-1](33)[/SIZE] says that this was a meeting of Chung Do Kwan instructors)it was agreed to unify the Kwans under name of Tae Su Do. This was the year that the Kong Su Do Association broke up. However, Grand Master Choi says he suggested the name, Tae Kwon Do, and it was adopted at that meeting. Grand Master Park says that the name was changed to Tae Kwon Do in 1957 . On September 14, 1961 the Korean TKD Association was formed. However, Grand Master Kim says that this was when the Korean Tae Su Do Association was given official membership in the Korean National Sports Association (KNSA), and that the name Tae Kwon Do was not fully accepted by all Koreans until August, 1965. In any case, it is evident that the name, Tae Kwon Do, is of very recent origin. It would also seem that the name was devised within the Chung Do Kwan.

There is no standardisation. Collection of potentially contradictory dates are included. It clearly emphasises what was happening at the time - the Korean government trying to get all the kwans to come together as one organisation. Confusion is going to result, at least for a while. And it did!

I also like the fact that the school has not shied away from the ancient martial art history of Korea. It has been put into context and given a place of honour without trying to say TKD is Subak.


TKD is a very lucky art in regard to its history because it is young. It can, and does, have a quite complete record of the development of the whole art. Just by way of comparison, my own art is older but we cannot trace its origin back to a specific time. It could be 150 years old, it could be 1500 years old. TKD does not have this problem and, as a result, practitioners can see where the influences are, where they came from, what changes have occurred along the way, and so can gain a much broader understanding of their art.

I am quite sure that there is more to be found out. The Korean peninsula has been a place of war since the founding of the kwans and that will have had an effect. Information will have been lost, but if it can be found it will only add to the interesting history of TKD. It has to be remembered that history is not set in stone, it changes as new information comes to light and new interpretations of existing data become accepted.

 

[exile]

What an excellent document (e-document?). What need does TKD have for ancient history when it has all the splendour of its actual history? There are heroes, villains, there are Machiavellian manipulations, and secret plots. It may only be 65 years old but it is grand. True, it is only the perspective of one kwan but it is the oldest of the kwans so has had members present for all the developments of TKD.

I am astounded by the honesty of the history. One part in particular emphasised this for me, the discussion of the term Tae Kwon Do.



There is no standardisation. Collection of potentially contradictory dates are included. It clearly emphasises what was happening at the time - the Korean government trying to get all the kwans to come together as one organisation. Confusion is going to result, at least for a while. And it did!

I also like the fact that the school has not shied away from the ancient martial art history of Korea. It has been put into context and given a place of honour without trying to say TKD is Subak.


TKD is a very lucky art in regard to its history because it is young. It can, and does, have a quite complete record of the development of the whole art. Just by way of comparison, my own art is older but we cannot trace its origin back to a specific time. It could be 150 years old, it could be 1500 years old. TKD does not have this problem and, as a result, practitioners can see where the influences are, where they came from, what changes have occurred along the way, and so can gain a much broader understanding of their art.

I am quite sure that there is more to be found out. The Korean peninsula has been a place of war since the founding of the kwans and that will have had an effect. Information will have been lost, but if it can be found it will only add to the interesting history of TKD. It has to be remembered that history is not set in stone, it changes as new information comes to light and new interpretations of existing data become accepted.

Great, great post, ST. I agree with you completely that TKDers have enough to be proud of in the true history of their art that they do not need to accept the carefully constructed ROK government-devised fable which was, as a number of authors have pointed out, concoted for parochial nationalist/Olympic ambitions. It's actually been a great history, with many acts of what I think of as principled defiance. Lee Won Kuk resisted the efforts of the Syngman Rhee dictatorship to in effect enroll his senior instructors and advanced students into the Korean internal security forces, was judicially persecuted as a result, and accepted exile in Japan as the price. Hwang Kee resisted Gen. Choi's attempts to force the Kwans under the early KTA envelope, and paid for it with exile. Gen. Choi in his turn resisted the efforts of the Korean government, under the Park regime (whose coup he was, I gather, an early supporter and beneficiary of) to convert TKD entirely into a martial sport serving the ROK apparat agenda, and was forced to seek exile in his turn.

There's actually the makings of a first-class modern tragedy in this iteration of the same basic theme in all these stories. The lesson to me is clear: individuals may be the vehicles for the concentration of power, but those concentrations of power don't really belong to them, but to the State, as they learn, typically, too late. Kafkaesque, in a way, but look at all these people's lives...

But there is also the hopeful theme of resistance and recovery: in spite of the best efforts of the ROK Olympic apparatchiks to snuff it out, the detailed history of TKD's origins is begining to emerge as academic scholars, with no stake in the Korean government's self-glorification program or any other agendas than practicing their particular craft, dig out what really happened from under a number of layers of bogus Official Story. The truth really will out... we should feel good about that!

 

[tkd1964]

What an excellent document (e-document?). What need does TKD have for ancient history when it has all the splendour of its actual history? There are heroes, villains, there are Machiavellian manipulations, and secret plots. It may only be 65 years old but it is grand. True, it is only the perspective of one kwan but it is the oldest of the kwans so has had members present for all the developments of TKD.

I am astounded by the honesty of the history. One part in particular emphasised this for me, the discussion of the term Tae Kwon Do.





There is no standardisation. Collection of potentially contradictory dates are included. It clearly emphasises what was happening at the time - the Korean government trying to get all the kwans to come together as one organisation. Confusion is going to result, at least for a while. And it did!

I also like the fact that the school has not shied away from the ancient martial art history of Korea. It has been put into context and given a place of honour without trying to say TKD is Subak.


TKD is a very lucky art in regard to its history because it is young. It can, and does, have a quite complete record of the development of the whole art. Just by way of comparison, my own art is older but we cannot trace its origin back to a specific time. It could be 150 years old, it could be 1500 years old. TKD does not have this problem and, as a result, practitioners can see where the influences are, where they came from, what changes have occurred along the way, and so can gain a much broader understanding of their art.

I am quite sure that there is more to be found out. The Korean peninsula has been a place of war since the founding of the kwans and that will have had an effect. Information will have been lost, but if it can be found it will only add to the interesting history of TKD. It has to be remembered that history is not set in stone, it changes as new information comes to light and new interpretations of existing data become accepted.

The meeting in which the name Taekwon-Do was chosen was April 11, 1955 but when the name was taken to President Rhee, he rejected it and wanted Taek Kyon instead. Eventually, President Rhee did agree on TKD. Not all the Kwans changed thou.
In 1959, the Kwans got together to create the Korea Taekwon-do Association but the student uprising ended that. In 1961, they again got together but this time chose the name Korea Tae Soo Do Association. This name stayed until 1965, where it was changed to Korea Taekwon-do Association.

 

[exile]

The meeting in which the name Taekwon-Do was chosen was April 11, 1955 but when the name was taken to President Rhee, he rejected it and wanted Taek Kyon instead. Eventually, President Rhee did agree on TKD. Not all the Kwans changed thou.

I've run across this point too in various places: Rhee was taken with the idea that what he was seeing, at the Choi/Nam demo, was taekyon, not tangsoodo, even though Choi and Nam told him it was the latter. That shows you something about the relationship between the idea of taekyon on the one hand and Korean nationalist ideology on the other.

In 1959, the Kwans got together to create the Korea Taekwon-do Association but the student uprising ended that. In 1961, they again got together but this time chose the name Korea Tae Soo Do Association. This name stayed until 1965, where it was changed to Korea Taekwon-do Association.

Dakin Burdick argues the same point: tae soo do was the name that the kind of amalgamated Kwan technique set and curriculum went by till 1965. All those KTAs out there get very confusing.

David Beck has a nice discussion of the intricacies here.

A. Bear with me, this gets confusing. The founders of the first five kwans had tried and failed to form an association between World War II and the Korean War. On April 11, 1955 Choi presided at a naming committee meeting at which 'tae kwon do' was first proposed. Duk Sung SON says that he passed a piece of paper to Choi suggesting it and Choi took credit for it. No one other than those two would really know. Regardless, although the committee accepted the name, the kwans did not, because only the Chung Do Kwan and Oh Do Kwan (a Chung Do Kwan offshoot) were represented at the meeting. Most of the other kwans wanted to use the name Kong Soo Do. During the war a Korea Kong Soo Do Association was formed by most of the kwan heads. But Hwang Kee (Moo Duk Kwan founder) left and formed his own Korea Tang Soo Do Association, later renaming it Korea Soo Bakh Do Association. Choi in 1959 created a Korea Taekwondo Association but again there was lots of political infighting (there were 14 kwans by this time), and despite the desire to unify all the kwans were basically doing their own thing. The Ministry of Defense requested that a single organization be formed, and finally in September 1961 a series of unification meetings were held. The compromise name 'tae soo do' was agreed on (tae from taekwondo, soo from kong soo do), and the Korea Tae Soo Do Association was created. This time the unification took, despite Hwang Kee again leaving after a while to do his own thing. (So you have Moo Duk Kwan TKD and Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do and Moo Duk Kwan Soo Bakh Do organizations depending on who stayed or split along with Hwang Kee and when.) Finally TKD had the organization it needed to become the national sport of Korea.

During all this time Choi was in charge of teaching for the entire military (ie EVERY able-bodied male) and grew a lot in political power. When Choi became president of the KTA in 1965, he was able to get it's name changed to the Korean Taekwondo Association (NOT the same as Choi's Korea Taekwondo Association.) So you had 3 different KTAs, none existing at the same time!​

 

[tkd1964]

As I have said before, When the Kwang Jangs got together, all were for joining together for commonality but Gen. Choi wanted all to change what they were teaching to what he was teaching. I believe this would have insulted those Kwang Jangs at the time. They did not have the same feelings as General Choi had towards their Japanese learnt art. This caused larger rifts between Gen. Choi and the Kwan leaders especially after his return from Malaysia.

 

[FieldDiscipline]

Thanks for going over those points for me Exile. I particularly find the information regarding the legality of practicing TK during the occupation very interesting.

It has become clear to me the difference in techniques between your SMK pediree and my to be confirmed/Oh Do Kwan/Chung Do Kwan background.

It seems the SMK you do really is exactly what it says on the tin, shotokan translated. My TKD does contain some additional techs that could arguably be TK related, ie pushing kicks. I never saw these during my time training shotokan. I think that these are pretty tenuous links though and it is pretty undeniable that what is todays TKD is predominantly sourced through Shotokan.

It is a shame. TKD's history has it all, why be so ashamed of it? I remain convinced that my TKD has some native elements within it, but the similarities are just too clear. Its futile denying it really, especially given Won Kuk Lee and all the other pioneers who trained in Japan.

 

[exile]

Thanks for going over those points for me Exile. I particularly find the information regarding the legality of practicing TK during the occupation very interesting.

It has become clear to me the difference in techniques between your SMK pediree and my to be confirmed/Oh Do Kwan/Chung Do Kwan background.

It seems the SMK you do really is exactly what it says on the tin, shotokan translated. My TKD does contain some additional techs that could arguably be TK related, ie pushing kicks. I never saw these during my time training shotokan. I think that these are pretty tenuous links though and it is pretty undeniable that what is todays TKD is predominantly sourced through Shotokan.

SMK does have a reputation for being heavily—very heavily—Shotokan based. But here's the funny thing: Byung Jik Ro, our Kwan founder, decided that Gen. Choi had the right idea early on, and actually scrapped the original Shotokan/SMK curriculum in favor of the General's at one point! But then a new set of forms was developed by one of BJR's senior students, the Chung Bong hyung set, which are sometimes referred to as the 'lost forms' of TKD; in most of the SMK lineages, apparently, the original curriculum was restored, with some adopting the new Chang Bong set and some, like mine, readopting the Shotokan-based syllabus. So far as this new set of hyungs is concerned, Frankovich (here) has this to say about them:

Tae Kwon Do Song Moo Kwan was on of the original eight kwans recognized by the Korean government in 1945. Song Moo Kwan, the Pine Tree School, was founded by Byung Jik Ro in Seoul shortly after World War II and was one of the kwans that followed in General Choi's attempt to unify the Korean martial arts under the name Tae Kwon Do. Grandmaster Ro had trained with the Shotokan Karate founder, Gichin Funakoshi. When Song Moo Kwan was first taught, Grandmaster Ro used the forms that were taught to him by Funakoshi. When the kwans began to appear, each had its own philosophy and teachings. One concept that made Song Moo Kwan different from the others is that they felt that many of the techniques were being taught incorrectly because the hips were not involved enough while doing the techniques. After the unification of the kwans, Grandmaster Ro started to teach the poomse that had been developed by General Choi. These were used, and still are by some Song Moo Kwan instructors, until 1974 when a student of Grandmaster Ro designed the Chung Bong poomse. Master Jay Hyon had come to Minneapolis, MN in the early 1960's and set up the Karate Center. Master Hyon developed the Chung Bong poomse, which he introduced to his students, and replaced the poomse of General Choi. It is still unclear if these poomse have become the "official" poomse of Song Moo Kwan, but even today the Grandmaster's son Hee Sang Ro teaches them at the dojang (training hall) after Master Hyon retired from teaching. These poomse have become a very valuable training method for many students, unfortunately Master Hyon only developed seven poomse before his retirement.

These poomse are very unique in the fact that they introduce techniques sooner than their counterparts from other kwans and that they use "intermediate" stances for moving into a follow-up technique.​

Now these forms are completely unknown to my SMK lineage, through Gm. Joon Pye Choi, one of BJK's last senior students. So there is evidence of a major lineage fragmentation there, I'd say... I was completely floored when my instructor called my attention to these forms and asked me to help him locate information on them. There actually are videos of these forms (here)... seven forms I'd no idea about, in my own Kwan, that are apparently used as the basis for testing and promotion in a different lineage, that I'd no clue about. You can never tell what's just around the corner, eh? I kind of like that... it's always nice to be reminded that one lives in a world where neat things you never suspected can happen.

It is a shame. TKD's history has it all, why be so ashamed of it? I remain convinced that my TKD has some native elements within it, but the similarities are just too clear. Its futile denying it really, especially given Won Kuk Lee and all the other pioneers who trained in Japan.

I agree, but think of it this way: every MA is a transmutation of its input elements, and the result is genuinely different and valuable in each case. Karate started in Okinawa as a mix of native tuite elements and (probably) Fukien White Crane (maybe other stuff as well), possibly with an admixture of bujutsu element that had 'leaked over' from the Satsuma overlords. It got to Japan, where a lot of the early students of the Okinwan expats had had some school exposure to jujitsu; then on the Karate, where a whole different approach to kicking kicked in—sorry, couldn't help it —because—based on the full-power open-hip method of striking, where hip rotation drives the torque of the strike much more than it does in the Japanese forms. So on top of the skeleton of karate techniques we've inherited, we also have a very powerful set of kicking strikes added to the technique pool inherited ultimately from Japanese karate. I also agree with you, FD, that there is a native element in TKD, but my take is, it's not a specific technique set that was contributed, but rather a fondness for kicking, for use of the legs as offensive weapons. If you look at taekkyon, for example—which was also practiced in Japan, accoring to Stuart Culin's late 19th century ethnographic description—what stands out is the fact that the art is primarily a throwing, unbalancing game in which the legs are actively recruited, both to unbalance below and to help supply the pushing force above that tips the opponent over. It's actually a kind of vertical grappling which involves the legs heavily as thrusting elements to supply the push that tips the unbalanced oppo to the ground. I've seen Mongolian wrestling performances and read about how they work, and something similar is going on but thrusts driven by the legs aren't used as unbalancing weapons to nearly the same degree (though the Hulunbuir style also encourages the same kind of lower-body leg strikes to unbalance that taekkyon does, and leg grabs as parts of throws are mandatory in the Halh style... clearly there's a northern Asian cultural practice involved here, with plenty of local variation; it even goes up into the Arctic, though the rules change a good deal on the way. The Koreans work the legs more than anyone else does). The most realistic assessment of the situation I think is that both taekkyon and TKD, though fundamentally different in critical ways, are both manifestions of the Korea adherence to a belief in the effectiveness of leg techniques in whatever it is they're trying to do.

The real key, I think, is training. And here's where I see the problem: what if you want to teach people TKD from a self-defense, non-sport angle? What do you do? That's a tricky problem for curriculum design, especially given the number of young children who are typically enrolled in a dojang and provide a lot of its operating revenue. For most people, self-defense applications are going to be much more personally useful than sparring—I myself don't find sparring very interesting, in the same way that I don't find lacrosse or basketball all that interesting, to either watch or to do—but teaching serious self-defense is a very dicey proposition, especially for kids but also for adults (simply because it forces them to visualize the prospect of having to actually fight for their lives in dangerous situations). I see the pendulum of the TMAs swinging back to serious self-defense, but there are some built-in hurdles there, most definitely...

But I think, as Steel Tiger has said, that TKDists have reason to feel very good about what they have accomplished in the history of this modern Korean art. And I also think that it's important to realize that at this point, the way Americans, or Canadians, or the British or continental Europeans develop TKD is a legitimate dimension in its growth. TKD is a lot more than just what the Korean directorate decides it is.

 

[jim777]

At a recent breaking seminar at our school, the son of the late founder arrived wearing a gi that said "Song Moo Kwan" across the back. When I asked him about it, he stated that that was our school's original lineage. I don't know what happened along the way from then to now, but we're a standard ITF Chang H'on forms school now. Seems a shame to have lost the original forms..

 

[terryl965]

At a recent breaking seminar at our school, the son of the late founder arrived wearing a gi that said "Song Moo Kwan" across the back. When I asked him about it, he stated that that was our school's original lineage. I don't know what happened along the way from then to now, but we're a standard ITF Chang H'on forms school now. Seems a shame to have lost the original forms..

Yes it does

 

[exile]

At a recent breaking seminar at our school, the son of the late founder arrived wearing a gi that said "Song Moo Kwan" across the back. When I asked him about it, he stated that that was our school's original lineage. I don't know what happened along the way from then to now, but we're a standard ITF Chang H'on forms school now. Seems a shame to have lost the original forms..

Jim, your lineage must have been one that stuck with Byung Jik Ro's conversion to the ITF curriculum, as per my previous post. So you lost the Shotokan/Palgwe form base. But I gather from what you say that you didn't get the Chung Bong forms either... I agree with Terry: that is a shame!

 

[jim777]

It's part of the reason I ended up in Seido as well; it gives me the chance to learn at least some of the Japanese forms common to Shotokan and the chance to study with a 9th Dan I would not otherwise have had as well.

 

[exile]

It's part of the reason I ended up in Seido as well; it gives me the chance to learn at least some of the Japanese forms common to Shotokan and the chance to study with a 9th Dan I would not otherwise have had as well.

Sounds like a good decision, Jim. BTW, I'm working on that bibliography I mentioned to you; should have something by tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, continuing wishes for good luck on your test!

 

[jim777]

Thanks again for the bibliography I'm beginning to think the test might be ok, I seem to have the differences between the various zuki, uke, and uchi's down at this point :lol:

 

[GlassJaw]

I wouldn't have thought it possible. Read the following account of the history and development of TKD at this dojang website, for an account that pays attention to the last decade and a half of careful historical scholarship and new discoveries about the where, when and whys of TKD's emergence, independent of the fabricated history devised by the ROK and its TKD institutional puppets

I guess Hell has been frozen over for quite awhile, then. I believe
that article is at least 5-8 years old. We've had it up on our Web
site for several years (since well before I joined the club, anyway).

I know this is rather a heresy of me, but I sometimes joke that the
main difference between TKD and Tang Soo Do is that the TKD folks
have a stronger tradition of denying that their art is largely rooted
in Shotokan.

Dan