Article on the History of TKD

[exile]

In Jan. 1, 1991 the Korea Taekkyon Association was established and in Nov. 30, 1998 Taekkyon became the official member of "National Sports Council for All".

So even this form of an ancient art has made it to the forefront by becomming a sport WOW.

Exactly. That was part of what I quoted and one of the points I was getting at: the thing has been 'sportifying' for quite a while now. And that means that when you see all these videos of supposed taekyon technique, you're looking at another sporting competition with emphasis on spectacle. For a mass audience, which is the novelty this time around. And those high complex kicks are a big part of that spectacle. They're hard to do, and they're hard (for the judges) to miss.

See i will believe some others that let go of this and try to hold true for so long..

But then, this stuff was oriented to competition from early on. The difference is, in the old days, you beat the guy when you got him on the ground and what counted was just that. These days, competition involves point-scoring and spectacle and more and more, that's the reason why people watch it. It happened to TKD; it happened to Karate; it happened to Gong-fu (in its circus development as wushu)... it happens anytime the camera becomes the ultimate judge of success.

Lastly the old PKA Prfessional Karate Association went belly up but yet someone has come out and fromed a new one see here
http://professionalkarateassociation.com/ and this is not the same org as in the seventy or eighties but they would try to make you believe.

Right, those people a quarter of a century ago or so could fight and wanted to fight. Think about Joe Lewis, Skipper Mullins, Ray Kurban, Bob Halliburton and the rest of them. But the TV lens is a kind of sausage machine: it grinds up everything going in, and everything coming out winds up looking the same...

 

[Twin Fist]

Brain Pain yet again..............

 

[terryl965]

Right, those people a quarter of a century ago or so could fight and wanted to fight. Think about Joe Lewis, Skipper Mullins, Ray Kurban, Bob Halliburton and the rest of them. But the TV lens is a kind of sausage machine: it grinds up everything going in, and everything coming out winds up looking the same...

Remember I was part of that group a long time ago . Well it seems me and you are pretty much on the same page. Back when we spared it was more like a fight than a sport.

 

[arnisador]

In Jan. 1, 1991 the Korea Taekkyon Association was established and in Nov. 30, 1998 Taekkyon became the official member of "National Sports Council for All".

Arts are re-invented constantly...Greek pankration may be the best-known example. Bartitsu, Irish stick-fighting, some FMAs, various WMAs, African martial arts, and on and on, all have been re-developed from books, oral tradition, experimentation, and a large amount of interpolation via splicing in techniques from related/similar arts.

It happens all the time. From the same mindset that tries to revive dead or dying languages for cultural pride and unity (e.g. Hebrew, Hawaiian, various Native American languages, etc.) comes revived martial arts. Everyone can see it in other systems yet it can be hard to see it in our own at times.

Taek kyon did not survive in any meaningful way. We know the Japanese were cruel and efficient occupiers. Why is it hard for people to believe they stamped out taek kyon (whatever that meant at the time) as they did so many other cultural practices? If they had had mass media like today, Korean would be an extinct language.

 

[Twin Fist]

Why is it hard for people to believe they stamped out taek kyon (whatever that meant at the time) as they did so many other cultural practices? If they had had mass media like today, Korean would be an extinct language.

you are not wrong, but you know why........

 

[exile]

I would venture to say that Korean kicking, whether synthesized into Taekkyon, Taekwondo, Hapkido, or whatever seems to be a constant. However, of the three mentioned, Taekkyon seems to be the one most resistant to outside change because it sees itself as the original Korean art. Taekkyon does predate Taekwondo,

Yes, that's my main point: there is a kind of subarctic emphasis—in many of the Siberian cultures and certainly in the Inuit cultures—on height/accuracy tests of kicking abilities, the more spectacular the better. Ethnologists back into the 19th century describes games similar to the modern jumping/kicking competitions of the Arctic and subarctic Inuit. If you combine the shoulder-grappling of Mongolian and Manchurian wrestling traditions with these leg-skill testing competitions, taekkyon fits right in, and it's not surprising, given the geography, that not just Korea but Japan as well, as Culin described it in his late 19th century ethnography of northern Asian games and sports, had the same competitive activity. No question, taekkyon taps into a much older traditional source than TKD. What we're really wrangling over is the nature and direction of influence between them.

and I could easily see them as saying those kicks originated from within Taekkyon.
I'm not saying that Taekkyon has always had all those kicks; but it seems to me that it would be the most likely original breeding ground for them. It is well known that Taekkyon and Taekwondo did some intermingling. It therefore stands to reason that as Taekwondo cast off its Japanese-influenced technique, it replaced those techniques with Korean-originated techniques, especially since those Taekkyon kicks and ways of moving are unique to it. Our free fighting was very similar to that as far as steps and flowing back and forth between partners. I definitely don't see that in Japanese karate, which tends to be much more rigid and linear.
Not to say that Taekwondo always had those, but if they did not descend from Taekkyon, they were at least highly influenced. especially since there were no longer Japanese overlords saying they couldn't do it.

OK. To me, the problem is, how much direct influence was there, given the thinness on the ground of taekkyon practitioners. There was an idea in the air about taekyon, all right: the fact that, as Gen. Choi reported, Syngman Rhee himself insisted that what Nam Tae Hi had demo'd for his was taekyon, not, as the General himself recalls referring to it, tang soo do, is just one clue. I think that is part of the powerful attraction that the idea of taekkyon has had for many Koreans who have tried to reconstruct a history for themselves that they can salvage some self-respect from, in spite of what was done to them.

But there was a serious shortage of actual practitioners, relative to the number of people who were learning TKD. And if I recall what I've read correctly, military TKD, the kind that Gen. Choi and NTH taught, was very stripped down and brutal, emphasizing a kind of super-Shotokan attitude of just powering through the defender's guard and doing maximum damage in close-range fighting. It's kind of imponderable at this point where that influence could have come from. My hope is just that people will maintain an open mind and investigate other sources that might have fed the specific techniques we see developing in TKD in the late 1960s and early 70s, that kind of became its trademark.

Right, those people a quarter of a century ago or so could fight and wanted to fight. Think about Joe Lewis, Skipper Mullins, Ray Kurban, Bob Halliburton and the rest of them. But the TV lens is a kind of sausage machine: it grinds up everything going in, and everything coming out winds up looking the same...

Remember I was part of that group a long time ago . Well it seems me and you are pretty much on the same page. Back when we spared it was more like a fight than a sport.

That to me is old-school TKD—and it was the attitude of the Korean military in the Korean and Vietnamese wars. All business.

It's not even competition and sport, I think, that does it—it's mass viewership, the production of a spectacle for a bunch of spectators all over the word, sitting in front of screens, which has that effect I was talking about... when there isn't a personal involvement in the activity or the outcome, but just a kind of entertainment response: are we having fun yet? Hm, you've already done that once, can't you come up with something flashier? In the end, all MAs run the risk of becoming one or another flavor of what wushu has become, once they start going down that slope.

 

[rmclain]

Nobody cared or really knew about Song Duk Ki until around 1982 or 1983 when he started teaching around Seoul. He had a few glimmers of recognition until he was recognized as a cultural asset. One of those glimmers include him in a photo to be used for the 1960 Olympics in Rome. http://www.kimsookarate.com/gallery-old-days/song-duk-ki.html

Otherwise, he was not really well known or recognized until he died. Then some people or Taekyun Associations started reinventing Taekyun because there really wasn't anything to learn. But, very few of today's Taekyun Masters ever met Song Duk Ki or studied from him.
http://www.kimsookarate.com/cyrnews/taek-kyun.html

http://www.kimsookarate.com/gallery-present/koreaTrip0804/KoreaTrip_pt2.htm

R. McLain

 

[FieldDiscipline]

Very interesting as always Robert. Thanks.