I'll start a new thread if you think it will help.
I'm not saying that it didn't happen. My father fought in the Korean War and he has told me the condition of the country back then and how the people had basically nothing, no food, no clothes, no money, no job, no hope and that it was a desperate time, no doubt about it.
What I am saying is that my Korean born teachers also obviously lived through that time period but they did not let it affect them to the point where they did negative things like fight with another instructor outside of a meaningless local tournament over a match. Their attitude about tournaments was, which is what I carry with me today is, you do your best and whatever the result is the result. We don't get mad or wild at the referees, but rather we maintain our discipline and respect no matter what. I can tell you that we have been involved in some highly questionable calls, at team trials no less, so much so that the Korean born TA physically took the American born referee crew outside for 30 minutes after two such matches to discuss who knows what. That sort of thing. We do our best and the result is the result.
To tell you the truth, I have heard of stories of some instructors fighting with other instructors at local tournaments before. And it wasn't limited to Korean born instructors either. But those instructors in general weren't those that became active nationally or internationally. Instead, they and their low level small pond thinking stayed at the lower levels of the Taekwondo community. I never saw that sort of behavior at a USTU National or WTF International Event from a Korean born practitioner. Have you?
Perhaps my teachers were ahead of the curve as far as that went because they didn't go around fighting with other instructors about match results at our local tournaments. Perhaps they grew up in an educated family with strong confucian or even christian values, the benefit of which the instructors who you saw fighting maybe did not have. I see that as an advantage. You seem to think that that is a weakness of some sort, that the fact that I have been fortunate enough to have chosen good instructors speaks ill of me and causes me to wear rose colored glasses while listening to the Beatles, that if I took those rose colored glasses off that I would stop trying to make lemonade all the time and instead understand just how sour those grapes really are. Same thing for self defense, that if I spent time on the mean streets as an LEO and saw up front and personal how violent it is out there, then maybe I would have a better appreciation for self defense. Maybe I am the exception. If so, then that is just one more thing that I have to be grateful about.
