I just look at other martial arts such as Okinawan karate, and they do not change their ways of training simply because some people do not want to train hard. If people cant take the training, they quit, but karate does not change. In taekwondo the way we train changes and conforms to what the people want, which is the EASY way of doing things, especially here in America where the people are soft and need instant gratification/quick results. People here do not like dedicating themselves to tough training for years on end. But even in Korea, the tough, old-school ways of training are almost completely lost. It bothers me that karate is so steadfast in their ways and build karateka around their way of training, rather than rebuild karate into what the people want. Taekwondo on the other hand succumbs to the all-mighty dollar and gives in to discarding the tougher, yet valuable and important aspects of training, in order to please everybody. This is not good, this is not how good martial artists are made.
The idea that taekwondo is intended to be a sport is not an excuse, in my opinion. In recent years, yes, more and more people are training taekwondo for sport. But that is not what taekwondo was originally meant to be. TKD was a hard style of martial arts meant for combat. It was a military art and saw action in the Korean War. Sport taekwondo is simply a more recent component. But karate nowadays is becoming more sportified as well, yet their traditional art and training methods has not withered away like taekwondo's has. Karate is able to maintain both a traditional, combat related art in addition to a sport side, but taekwondo has almost completely transitioned to a sport. Why is this?
