Human Weapon- TKD

[jks9199]

Over the last several years, something I have tried to do is cross reference the content of Tae Kyon, since many people say it led to Tae Kwon Do, while just as many people say it didn't.
What I have is consistant proof through video footage and written text that Tae Kyon gave Tae Kwon Do many of the kicking techniques it now uses.
Why do I make that statement?
1. Consistant footage on Youtube (a great resource btw) that shows Taekyon fighters doing the same kicking attacks (many of the same kicking anyway) modern TKD uses. These include: roundhouse, stepping attacks, spinning kicks, jumping kicks, and jump spinning kicks.
2. The footage from Human Weapon that shows Jason and Bill doing leg techniques that agree with the footage I have seen previously.
3. Written text that corroborates the above.
4. The way we did techniques in my organization that seemed to directly reflect this influence.

That's pretty circular proof... Your "consistent YouTube footage" could all be from one person or from people who learned in your organization, or even simply mislabeled. The Human Weapon footage is really nothing but more of the same. Your written texts would need to be cited -- and I'd argue that they aren't really much evidence unless they're in Korean, or otherwise document historic Taekyon in context.

Suggesting that the techniques are similar isn't much support, either. I could equally well argue that Mauy Thai or Savate influenced TKD, because either style also has some of those same techniques.

I don't have a dog in this fight; TKD is not my style. I do suspect that indigenous Korean fighting approaches influenced the well-document Shotokan basis of Tae Kwon Do. While I'm sure many indigenous systems were suppressed -- I'm equally certain that many were more quietly preserved. A friend of mine learned a style of Tae Kwon Do that had little resemblance to modern TKD when his father was stationed in Korea; the best he knows is that it was a family system, taught to him by a neighbor who didn't belong to any of the existing TKD federations/organizations.

 

[YoungMan]

If you Google Taek kyon, one of the articles you get is a series written by Robert Young, who is a well-established martial arts writer. I think he writes for Black Belt, but don't quote me on that.
All the Youtube Tae Kyon footage I saw was filmed in Korea and is in Korean. Some of it is from organized Tae Kyon tournaments, other footage is individual Tae Kyon training. There is a great deal of the unique footwork-triangular, dancelike, shifting back and forth-as well as the kicking I mentioned previously. Much of the kicking involves to the legs, as well as push kicking used by the WTF. But there are also high kicks we would recognize, jumping front kicks, jump spinning kicks etc.

 

[exile]

Over the last several years, something I have tried to do is cross reference the content of Tae Kyon, since many people say it led to Tae Kwon Do, while just as many people say it didn't.
What I have is consistant proof through video footage and written text that Tae Kyon gave Tae Kwon Do many of the kicking techniques it now uses.
Why do I make that statement?
1. Consistant footage on Youtube (a great resource btw) that shows Taekyon fighters doing the same kicking attacks (many of the same kicking anyway) modern TKD uses. These include: roundhouse, stepping attacks, spinning kicks, jumping kicks, and jump spinning kicks.
2. The footage from Human Weapon that shows Jason and Bill doing leg techniques that agree with the footage I have seen previously.
3. Written text that corroborates the above.
4. The way we did techniques in my organization that seemed to directly reflect this influence.

I feel a bit strange having to repeat this... I'd have though it were fairly obvious: you cannot use the resemblance between what you are calling Taekyon and TKD to argue that techs from the former were the ancestor of techs from the latter. We have documentary and living-witness attestation that 19th c. taekkyon was essentially extinct early in the 20th c. The 'taekkyon' that you are talking about in connection with TKD there has to be the 'revivalist' art that adopted the name of the earlier form and developed in the post-Korean War era. And what you are claiming is that this art was the source of the resemblant kicks in TKD. But your only evidence for this account of the fact of the resemblance you cite is the resemblance itself! You are leaving out the very thing you need to make your argument work: evidence that 'taekkyon' was the source of TKD's kicking techs. Do you see what I'm getting at? If you show me two papers written by two different students, A and B, that were handed into two different classes and are word-for-word identical, you cannot say, well, the word-for-word identity is proof that A copied the paper from B. To do that you have to show that the other possibilities—that B copied from A, or that both A and B copied from the third source—are ruled out. That's exactly the thing you aren't doing in your series of posts. All you're doing is in effect shoving the papers into my face and saying, 'But isn't it obvious that A copied from B? Look, they're identical!!'

Given the demography of TKD participation vs. Taekkyon participation, given the early and relentless development of TKD as a point-scoring martial sport and the scoring systems and judging practices that came to reward higher and more flamboyant kicks, and given the training backgrounds of the Kwan founders, their first and second generation students, the case for Taekkyon as the source of TKD's techs is about as weak as you can imagine—particularly because we have a nice control: sport karate undewent the same evolution in its kicks, departing from the low, mean leg techs of the Okinawan source art to the point where high flashy kicks are as common in sport Shotokan competition as they are in Olympic TKD. If you award points for accurate strike to higher targets using techically more difficult moves, and if you tend to ignore less spectacular techniques in favor of the big-ticket spinning/aerial ones, then you are going to get the kinds of kicks we see in both Olympic TKD and sport Karate.

And again, maybe 'many people' say that Taekkyon lead to TKD, but no marital arts historians who have actually studied the question and published their findings in peer-reviewed journals believe that. Many people also believe that Uri Geller was able to bend spoons with 'mind power', that the Bermuda Triangle contains an evil force which eats boats, and that they can channel the spirits of their distant royal Egyptian ancestors. What people say doesn't signify unless they can offer coherent, noncircular argumentation to support it. And to date, neither you nor anyone else advocating a 'Taekkyon' ancestry for TKD has even begun to come close to doing that.

Now it can be argued that early TKD was very derivative of Shotokan, more or less depending on your Kwan. My argument is that modern TKD directly stems from Taekkyon. I have seen too much proof to believe otherwise.

Then please provide this proof—and it had better not be of the `A clearly copied the paper from B' sort that so far is all you've given, because that is, as I've noted, not proof of anything at all. There is, on the other hand, abundant evidence, recorded in the work of the people I've cited, that TKD derives from Shotokan primarily, that its original tech set was just that of Shotokan, that its high and complex kicks developed steadily in response to the increasing emphasis within the art on martial sport competition. It is very evident however that you are unfamiliar with this research, because any argument designed to support the point you're defending would have to start by explaining away the evidence that I've alluded to. And it seems very strange to me that one would try to have a serious discussion of a historical issue without some basic familiarity with the premier work carried out by historians whose careers are built on the detailed study of that issue, among others.

Now, if the argument is that TKD and Taekkyon either had nothing to do with each other, or TKD and TK influenced each other (possible), my question is Where Did Those Techniques Come From? Japanese karate doesn't teach technique like that.

Have you observed any sport Karate matches over the past decade? What don't they do in Japanese sport Karate that they do in TKD?

A viewing of Human Weapon-Karate will prove that.

You are seriously saying that one hour of Human Weapon is your evidence base for the technical content of Japanese Karate???

And a martial art born out Shotokan would not do that either. If you don't learn kicking like that, how would you know to do it?

Would you like to explain (i) how you know that 'a martial art born out Shotokan would not do that either' and (ii) why you think that the techniques you're referring to do not represent normal extensions within the art itself?? Particularly when competitive uses of a martial art inevitably and naturally require modification of what was originally a highly destructive fighting system to suit its new role of athletic spectacle with minimal risk of major injury to the participants? I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning here even a little bit.

To me, the only plausible explanation is that TK was either there from the beginning or strongly influenced later on.

That's fine as a fact about you. And if you want to leave it there, so far as your own knowledge of TKD is concerned, that's fine too; it doesn't impinge on anyone else. But if you want what you consider plausible to be taken as plausible by anyone else, you have a lot more work to do than simply reporting your impression of what 'must have' happened. There is now a serious literature on the evolution of TKD, presenting detailed evidence about what did and what did not happen. And to the extent that you ignore that evidence—as you've consistently done in your posts—to that extent you're just talking to yourself, unfortunately.

It is well known that the Chung Do Kwan people consciously wanted to purge TKD of Japanese influence and technique. Fair enough. What do you replace it with? If you purposely implant TKD with TK technique to Koreanize it, then it can be rightly said that modern TKD is a direct descendant of TK. Again, the only other explanation is that TK technique was there from the beginning.

Sorry, no sale. General Choi was one of the foremost of the Japanese-influence purgers, but what he produced to satisfy that requirement was a set of hyungs which looked remarkably unlike the original kata sets that formed the Kwan-era curriculum, but incorporated major chunks of those kata in recombined form. As another of the major TKD technical scholars whose work I gather you're unfamiliar with has noted,

The first patterns that can be considered exclusive to Taekwondo were the Chang Hon forms, composed by General Choi Hong Hi in the years leading up to the founding of the ITF. ... one of Choi's basic motivations was to provide Taekwondo with a set of patterns with a clearly Korean identity... thus, rather than being content to practise the Karate forms in much the same way as Okinawan masters had adopted Chinese hsings, Choi designed a set of patterns which he felt would be more acceptable from a nationalist standpoint.

...They nevertheless owe a great deal to the Karate kata, particularly the Pinan/Heian series. Many sequences are direct transplants from the katas, or sequences in which one or two individual techniques have been substituted​

(Simon O'Neil, Combat TKD, Ch. 1, p. 5). And things were even more like that in the WTF hyungs, which didn't reflect nearly the same intensity of motivation to eliminate the Japanese influence from the art. The very fact that that 'Japanese influence' was associated in particular with the kata sets in the curriculum tells you how much of a role Shotokan played in forming that curriculum. And since rearranging the sequences does not reflect a major change in techniques—the kihons were left the same, and were organized into the same combat-effective subsequences, even in the Chang Hons—there doesn't seem to be any support at all for your supposition that purging TKD of its Japanese ancestry involved a fundamental technical change in the art; what changed was the appearance of the art. Choi also added the `sine wave' component of movement to TKD techs; I seriously hope you're not going to tell me that he got that from Taekkyon! The techs, with predictable enhancement and modification in the sport-MA direction, the kihon line drills inherited from Funakoshi's university-club training methodology, and most other aspects of the art remained the same. The point is, you 'replace' the most obvious-looking Japanese aspects of the technique, the kata forms that give Okinawan/Japanese karate its most distinctive identity, with patterns that don't (at first sight) look like those kata. And that's sufficient. So your basic premise in the passage I've quoted has no support, and you have no argument along these lines.

Again, I'd urge you to learn something about the actual history of TKD, as documented by specialist MA historians (several of whom, e.g. Capener and Adroguès, are advanced dan practitioners of the art as well), before you try to construct arguments on behalf of your impressionistic hunches.

 

[K31]

I really enjoyed the episode. I was lucky, I forgot about it being scheduled of the 21st and just stumbled on it.

It made me think of all the reasons I like TKD.

I wasn't so much surprised at them learning a tornado kick as I was them learning the push kick. I assumed at least one of them would have been exposed to that somewhere.

It looked to me like "The Professor" (sorry, I can't remember his real name) did take it easy on them in the beginning but I thought that was courteous. If someone came to your dojang to do your style for the first time would you give them everything you had just to prove your style was superior to another?

If you have Comcast, last season they ran the previous three episodes (back from the current one they were airing at that time) on their "On Demand", gratis. I haven't checked this season but that might be a way for those who missed to get a chance to see it.

 

[windwalker]

I enjoyed this episode. I think the skills demonstrated by the TKD masters were incredible. I believe one of the main problems with the show is that there not much you can actually learn in only 5 days. It was interesting to see Bill and Jason fight a real champion this time. While I also enjoyed seeing Bill getting knocked out, I likewise thought it was kind of lame to not allow punches to the head. Maybe we'll see a slightly more humble Bill in the next episode.:asian:

 

[AceHBK]

I likewise thought it was kind of lame to not allow punches to the head. Maybe we'll see a slightly more humble Bill in the next episode.:asian:

I had no issue with "no punches to the head". I mean Bill said F it and did it anyways but then again he got knocked out for it too...lol! There is no punches to the head normally in sparring.

I have been hoping that for Bill since the show started but it hasn't happened.

Funny to see how they said Bill needed to lose some weight..lol

 

[AceHBK]

If there is anyone who hasn't seen this episode PM me and I will send you the download links.

 

[HelloKitty]

Funny to see how they said Bill needed to lose some weight..lol

And he didn't smile at all LOL

 

[AceHBK]

And he didn't smile at all LOL

:lfao: so true!! Bill did not find it funny at all.

Korean Guy: You need to lose some weight

Bill: Lose weight? It's all muscle

 

[HelloKitty]

:lfao: so true!! Bill did not find it funny at all.

Korean Guy: You need to lose some weight

Bill: Lose weight? It's all muscle

ohh! I had forgotten that! it was SO hilarius! xD

 

[AceHBK]

ohh! I had forgotten that! it was SO hilarius! xD

I KNEW i forgot something.

Bill complained that his pants were too tight so he couldn't move fast. He said if he didn't have on those tight slacks he could have moved faster!!! LOL!

First time I have ever heard someone complain about slacks being too tight to move fast.

 

[IcemanSK]

Ok, now that I've seen the whole show (thanks Ace!) I can give my informed thoughts. As many of us said eariler, expectations for this were very low. The figure they quoted was 70 milion people worldwide train in TKD. Even if that's just Kukkiwon numbers, that's huge. It probably is numbers that the KKW gave them. So that obviously doesn't take into account all the variations, organizations & groups that make up the rainbow of TKD practioners.

The hard thing about doing an hour show on the uniqueness of the technical aspects of TKD,(albeit on the History Channel) is that one can't go into a detailed history of TKD. (Due to it's difficulty, it's a whole other Oprah!) The technical & historians that they spoke to were most likely the KKW folks that would tell the KKW PC version of the history. Because of that, Taekkyeon had to be added into the show.

I wouldn't recommend the show as the best example of what TKD is about to anyone, but I thought the techniques (especially the axe kick) were good. If you were going to distinguish TKD from other Arts, you can't show a kick that other Arts do, too. (Non-MA-ists aren't gonna see the difference between a Muay Thai Round kick & a TKD round kick.)

I thought the show was ok, but I'll wait for the episode about TKD that exile, Terry, Kacey, Miles & Wade do. THAT would be much better!

 

[crushing]

I thought the show was ok, but I'll wait for the episode about TKD that exile, Terry, Kacey, Miles & Wade do. THAT would be much better!

I would like to see that one!!!!!!!

 

[newGuy12]

I wouldn't recommend the show as the best example of what TKD is about to anyone, but I thought the techniques (especially the axe kick) were good. If you were going to distinguish TKD from other Arts, you can't show a kick that other Arts do, too. (Non-MA-ists aren't gonna see the difference between a Muay Thai Round kick & a TKD round kick.)

Yes, I liked the tornado kick, too!

I thought the show was ok, but I'll wait for the episode about TKD that exile, Terry, Kacey, Miles & Wade do. THAT would be much better!

Yes!

Haha -- my pants are too tight! Haha!

 

[YoungMan]

You mean watch a show that declares Tae Kwon Do as essentially Korean Shotokan with Gen. Choi as the Founder? I think not.
I personally found the Taekkyon segments fascinating. I saw a lot of what you would consider Tae Kwon Do kicks in that.
And watching Jason and Bill trying Taekkyon foortwork quite amusing.

 

[arnisador]

that declares Tae Kwon Do as essentially Korean Shotokan with Gen. Choi as the Founder

That's what we're saying.

 

[foot2face]

That's what we're saying.

Then you'll be just as inaccurate as Human Weapon! The truth is somewhere in the middle.

 

[exile]

I personally found the Taekkyon segments fascinating. I saw a lot of what you would consider Tae Kwon Do kicks in that.

Sure you did. Reinvented taekkyon was formed... sigh... during the same time period that TKD began to go off on its own career of flamboyant kick development, and that was the hot thing then. So are you suprised that this newly introduced revivalist art, 'taekkyon', picked up on what had developed out of Shotokan's low, combat oriented kicks under the pressures of athletic competition? Why is this point, which the huge bulk of historical evidence (made explicit in the sources I've cited) documents, proving so elusive for you?

And watching Jason and Bill trying Taekkyon foortwork quite amusing.

It may be fascinating to you, and it may be amusing as well. But what does it have to do with the empirical historical question of which techniques in which arts developed from which sources?? Sorry, but I'm not following the connections amongst ideas in your posts at all.

Instead of trying any further, let me just cite the following discussion from Capener's essay:

In 1921, at the age of 70, Ch'oe Yong-nyon described t'aekkyon in his book, Haedong
chukchi, as a game in which two partners squared off and tried to knock each other
down with their feet. He went on to say, "This became a means of exacting revenge for
a slight or winning away an opponent's concubine through betting. Due to this, the
game was outlawed by the judiciary and eventually disappeared.13 Many writers have
tried to assert that t'aekkyon was forced underground as a result of being outlawed by
the Japanese during the colonial period due to its potential as a source of anti-Japanese
revolt. In fact some have gone a step further and, after stating that the Japanese
outlawed t'aekkyon, attempted to explain the use of the name karate (kongsu and
tangsu) in post-liberation Korea and the use of karate forms, (hyong) by stating that,
due to t'aekkyon's similarity to karate, the Japanese forced Koreans to use the name
karate in referring to t'aekkyon and to include Japanese forms in its practice.14 This
seems to be an apparent contradiction. If the Japanese had banned the practice of
t'aekkyon, how and why would they force Koreans to call it karate or incorporate karate
techniques into it? This is a moot point. According to both Ch'oe Yong-nyon and Song
Tok-ki, the last progeny of Choson t'aekkyon, t'aekkyon had, for the most part, faded
out of folk culture shortly after the turn of the century. Ch'oe Yong-nyon stated that
due to gambling and other unsavory aspects deemed harmful to the preservation of
healthy social customs, t'aekkyon was forbidden and even youngsters seen playing it
were chased with a switch by the village elders. In this way it soon disappeared.
T'aekkyon seems to have suffered the same fate as that of another Choson era folk game
called p'yon ssaum which was an organized rock fighting between two teams, usually
two villages. This game was popular since the Koryo dynasty and was watched by
kings, as was subak. However, King Sejong was so horrified by the primitiveness of it
that he ordered it banned. Nevertheless it survived repeated attempts at prohibition by
the judiciary17 which finally succeeded in abolishing it sometime after the turn of the
century. Both t'aekkyon and p'yon ssaum are listed in a book called Korean Games
written in 1895 by all American scholar named Stuart Culin who describes t'aekkyon as
a game in which the object is to kick the opponent's leg out from under him or catch
the opponent's kick and throw him to the ground. He goes on to say that the game was
also played in Japan. In a similar book called Han'guk-ui minsok nori (Korean Folk
Games), written in 1975 by a Korean scholar of Korean folk customs named Shim U-
song, a good deal of attention is given to rock fighting but there is no mention of
t'aekkyon. Further testimony to the completeness of t'aekkyon 's disappearance from
Korean folk customs is given by Song Tok-ki the Choson's "last t'aekkyon player" who
was invited in 1958 to give a demonstration of t'aekkyon on the occasion of then
President Syngman Rhee's birthday. In spite of searching in "100 directions" he was
unable to locate even one person versed in t'aekkyon with whom he could
demonstrate. This in spite of hundreds of t'aegwondo schools throughout the country.
Song Tok-ki goes on to say that t'aekkyon was never thought of as other than a game
and existed almost exclusively in Seoul where it was played regularly in a few
locations.​

(from Capener, 'Problems in the Identity and Philosphy of T'aegwando and their Historical Causes', available here.) Capener, a technical advisor to USA Taekwondo and professor at Ehwa University in Korea, has probably done more research on the role of taekkyon in KMA history than any other scholar. You would do well to read what he's discovered about the nonrelationship between taekkyon and TKD history.

 

[arnisador]

In 1921, at the age of 70, Ch'oe Yong-nyon described t'aekkyon in his book, Haedong
chukchi, as a game in which two partners squared off and tried to knock each other
down with their feet. He went on to say, "This became a means of exacting revenge for
a slight

We played a variation of this game in Buffalo, NY when I was growing up. You'd put your hands on the opponent's shoulders and he would do the same, and you'd try to kick him down and he'd do the same. Kicking hard to the shins was expressly legal. Pushing him down with your hands was cheatin', though rules were applied with the same standard of case as in Professional Wrestling.

YoungMan, you wouldn't go to a history professor for martial arts instruction...why go to a martial arts instructor for history? We all repeat the legends we learned from our instructors. I told the story of Okinawan peasants breaking through the samurais' wooden armour with their board-breaking skills for much longer than I'd care to admit. I wasn't lying--I was a 15 year old karate student and I believed it. I believe my (well-educated) instructor did too.

In this case, those knowledgeable individuals who have looked at the matter have concluded that TKD was overwhelmingly Shotokan originally. Clearly it's changed since then, and I don't doubt that the legend of taekkyon could have influenced that--not the techniques, but the larger-than-life memories of them that people sought to emulate.

 

[IcemanSK]

Shotokan is the base for Taekwondo. GM Lee, Won Kuk & many other Kwan founders were Funikoshi's (sp?) students. We owe a great debt to Funikoshi. But as I said, that story wouldn't be told by the Kukkiwon, because when they merged the Kwans, no longer had unique histories. Given that, they had to tell the "ancient history" of the Korean fighting arts. The story of TKD being 2000 years old is simple, & quick so that we can commence with the kickin' (which is what people watch the show for). A show on any one of the Kwan's histories would take more than hour & would only be interesting to the few of us MA geeks on MT:wink: