'Korean karate': candor and denial

I
As you metion GM Kim Soo, go to his site and read the Korean Karate history. You can replace the word Taekwon-Do for Kwon Bup.

I did. Those articles were written in 1966, when Gm. Kim was trying to gain a foothold in the US. Now go to his latest writing, his article in Black Belt/MartialTalk here. You might find the following passages pertinent to your own comments:

GMKS: The first generation of instructors (instructors that opened the first kwans following WWII) only taught a few years before the Korean War started and the kwans temporarily closed. Some of the first generation instructors disappeared, such as Yoon Byung-in and Chun Sang-sup. So, the top students of the various kwans may have only 3-5 years of training under the first generation. There wasn’t enough time to really discuss the background because of the classroom environment of “no questions.” Also, because of the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1909 to 1945, the second generation of martial artists hated the Japanese. Connection with anything Japanese, karate for example, was frowned upon. Even though karate was from Okinawa, most kwan founders studied karate taught in Japan during college.

In 1960, I would frequently visit the Korean Taesoo-Do Association office. During one visit, a kwan head instructor got very angry with me because I wrote some history about his organization that included a connection to karate through Japan. I knew he had a reputation of assaulting people when he was mad at them, instead of talking or arguing. He was a “hit first, ask questions later-type person.” Luckily, the Vietnam Taekwondo delegation was visiting the Taesoo-Do Association that day. So, the kwan head instructor had to calm down because of the witnesses. This is an example of the feeling many people held for the Japanese.

RM: What did students call their martial art during those early days?

GMKS: Most people called it Tang Soo Do, Kong Soo Do or Kwon Bop. General Choi Hong-hi called his system, “Tae Kwon Do.”

RM: General Choi Hong-hi created Tae Kwon Do?

GMKS: In the early days he was teaching the same karate forms as the other kwans, such as Pyung Ahn, Bassai Tae, Kon Sang Kun, etc. Then in the late 1950’s he came up with a story about martial arts links to Korguryo dynasty, Silla Dynasty, 2000 years of tradition, etc. He created new forms and gave each form a name related to something in Korean history, such as a scholar’s name or a famous Korean patriot’s name. He called his system, “Taekwondo.” He was trying to get away from the connection to the Japanese - trying to make something patriotic. He wanted everyone to follow this new line and give up their previous training....

RM: It seems that some of the Korean martial art history you mentioned during this interview can be found on the internet.

GMKS: I saw that too. Yes, today the truth is coming out. Still some people try to make up some mysterious stories - claim their art is 2000 years old or from a monk in the mountains or something. But, if people are educated about history and lineage, they cannot be fooled. I believe Korea, like many other countries, had some type of martial arts being practiced before the 20th century. But after the Japanese occupation of Korea (1909-1945), indigenous martial arts were gone and influences from other places (Japan, Okinawa, China) were being taught.

This is the same as if someone’s father is a farmer, but tells everyone his father is a doctor. You should show respect for your father and let people know who he is, not make up some strange story. The same is for martial arts lineage. Your direct instructor is your martial arts father; his teacher is your grandfather, etc. This is your family line in the martial arts. It doesn’t matter where the art comes from. Martial art belongs to the people that practice and preserve it, not to “this country or that country.”

That's 40 years of research and writing after the 1966 article posted on his website, and becoming established enough to not have to worry about offending anyone who doesn't like him undermining the nouveau official line. I've bolded a few of the passages that seem to me relevant to the point. And Robert Young, in his seminal and detailed article 'The history and development of Taekyon' in the 1993 volume of Journal of Asian Martial Arts, singles out Gm. Kim as one of the very few Korean grandmasters who have bucked the enormous social pressure to endorse the official Korean line on 'ancient TKD', and has some choice observations there, based on his years of living and doing research there, on the intensity of that pressure. I'm in my office at the moment and don't have access to the paper, but... yes, I think a choice excerpt or two from Young's comments on Gm. Kim and the others whistleblowers he quotes would be very germane, at this point. More later on that. :)

True another fact might be that they do not want to be in a position of making any one, two or three individuals to big in the grand scope of things so that the sport is directly government controlled. Meaning everyone has to go through them.
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It could be, but it's such a relatively unusual mindset for an Asian MA... and in the end, I think it's going to cause huge disaffection among TKD practitioners. My guess is, it's partly to do with protecting the Olympic golden goose, and partly to do with the essential disappearance of locally produced, family-owned MA in the wake of Yi Dynasty's hostility to civilian martial arts, and latterly the Japanese occupation...
 
Yes, the article was from 1966 and his talk with Gen. Choi was in the 50's. GM Kim brings up the ancient art of Kwon Bup, Taekkyon and the ilk in 1966, ten years after His talk with Gen. Choi.
General Choi doesn't deny his Karate links does he. Because he developed different forms and gave them historcal Korean names does not mean he's denying his Karate roots. Tomorrow I will add some quotes of his since I am not at home right now.
General Choi said he didn't want to teach Koreans Tang Soo Do(Karate) which is why he developed Taekwon-Do.

Mike
 
Yes, the article was from 1966 and his talk with Gen. Choi was in the 50's. GM Kim brings up the ancient art of Kwon Bup, Taekkyon and the ilk in 1966, ten years after His talk with Gen. Choi.

And 42 years of research and publishing later, as Black Belt KMA correspondent for much of that time, you see what his judgment is on what he was told.

General Choi doesn't deny his Karate links does he. Because he developed different forms and gave them historcal Korean names does not mean he's denying his Karate roots.

That's not what the denial in question consists of. If Stuart's recollection is correct, he most definitely did deny his karate links in his final Combat interview. I am attempting to locate microfische records of the journal and expect to be able to turn it up in the next little while, and then we shall see, eh?

Tomorrow I will add some quotes of his since I am not at home right now.
General Choi said he didn't want to teach Koreans Tang Soo Do(Karate) which is why he developed Taekwon-Do.

Well, it'll be interesting to compare all the citations, once they're retrieved. Combat is a UK journal which is still going strong, and I'm going to be contacting them directly to obtain all three of their interviews with Gen. Choi.
 
Well all I would like to add is what a wonderful world we live in when we try to lie about everything :rofl:
 
Well all I would like to add is what a wonderful world we live in when we try to lie about everything :rofl:

You know what? One consequence of everyone lying is that it gives you a kind of privacy that you wouldn't otherwise have. Because if everyone lies, than anything anyone says about you—even if true—will be taken with a grain, or a bag, of salt. After all, knowing that everyone lies is going to make you pretty skeptical about anything you hear, eh? :D
 
You know what? One consequence of everyone lying is that it gives you a kind of privacy that you wouldn't otherwise have. Because if everyone lies, than anything anyone says about you—even if true—will be taken with a grain, or a bag, of salt. After all, knowing that everyone lies is going to make you pretty skeptical about anything you hear, eh? :D

You know....Skepticism can be a GOOD thing, especially when it comes to history and academic research - so maybe these decades of lies have actually improved the overall environment.
 
You know....Skepticism can be a GOOD thing, especially when it comes to history and academic research - so maybe these decades of lies have actually improved the overall environment.

It could be, we will have to wait and see in another houndred years
 
And Robert Young, in his seminal and detailed article 'The history and development of Taekyon' in the 1993 volume of Journal of Asian Martial Arts, singles out Gm. Kim as one of the very few Korean grandmasters who have bucked the enormous social pressure to endorse the official Korean line on 'ancient TKD',

...

Gen. Choi has never claimed TKD to be some ancient art. Have you read any of his books or his bio?
 
Gen. Choi has never claimed TKD to be some ancient art. Have you read any of his books or his bio?

Yup. What do you think his claims about Taekyon were in aid of? When Gm. Kim refers—in the part of his interview I cited—to Gen. Choi's references to the supposedly formative influence of taekyon on his MA, that is code for an alleged MA system that goes back to the Three Kingdoms era. Taekyon was supposed to be the modern relic of an ancient indigenous fighting system called subak (though the latter is actually just the Korean transliteration/pronunciation of an early Chinese term for boxing').

So far as I know, Gen. Choi was the first to push this 'ancient' pseudolineage for TKD. The fact is, the modern Taekyon association is itself very skeptical that he ever actually studied the sport/game, which he refers to as a fighting system, but which was much closer to a kind of pan-Northern Asian foot wrestling game, focusing on unbalancing and stomping strikes to the feet and legs, and which did not appear in Korea till the begining of the 19th century. This has been discussed ad infinitem elsewhere on the site, and there is actually very little evidence that Gen. Choi ever studied or practised taekyon.

It's true that General Choi also claimed that he himself had invented TKD. But the taekyon connection allowed him to link it to an ancient past. So he could have it both ways: his own personal creation, built on top of a putatively ancient putative martial art. That, I'm pretty sure, is what Gm. Kim is getting at when he talks about the General's claim of a history for TKD going back 2000 years.
 
Choi sadly/amusingly/thankfully (delete depending on preconception) changed his story on how TKD came about throughout his life.
 
Choi sadly/amusingly/thankfully (delete depending on preconception) changed his story on how TKD came about throughout his life.

This si so true, I can recall him stating that TKD was not ancient at all but brought by the Karate influence. I believe that was around 1984 or so.
 
Choi sadly/amusingly/thankfully (delete depending on preconception) changed his story on how TKD came about throughout his life.

This is true, and I think the following may be relevant to just how he changed that story. You can see the General's TKD career in three distinct phases. First, he's just one of a number of young Korean MAists who travel to Japan to study karate, hoping, apparently, to make a career of it on his return to Korea. Next, he's a rapidly rising military officer—with the reputation of a fearless patriot putting his life on the line to end control of Korea by the hated Japanese occupying forces—in a succession of military dictatorships (the Rhee regime was a covertly military goverment; the Park coup gave the RoK an overtly military regime) who is able to parlay his clout into a paramount position in the South Korean MA scene and, as Gm. Kim points out, bring embarrassingly harsh pressure to bear on dissenters who didn't sign on the Oh Do Kwan dotted line. Finally, he's in disgrace, partly a result of misjudging the nature of political conditions in Korea, partly as a result of his many enemies' seeking to bring him down (anyone in such a position of power and influence is going to have many enemies, and probably very few genuine friends), eventually becoming an expatriate whose MA organization has relocated out of Korean entirely.

Now, just look at the differences in his situation in the second and third phases of his MA career. In the phase between 1965 and the emergence of a unified national organization which absorbs, and liquidates, the separate Kwans, the thrust of his activity involves anti-Japanese/anti-Communist resistance. This is a period in Korean history when the Koreans were seeking to purge all traces of their humiliating, abusive treatment by the racist Japanese military. And not coincidentally, Gm. Kim tells us, Gen. Choi's story about the roots of TKD at this time link it to an ancient complex of (basically unknown, but symbolically very effective) indigenous martial arts. In the final phase of his career, when he's effectively in exile and his enemy isn't the Japanese but the RoK TKD institutions that have succeeded, and, in his view, supplanted him, what's crucial is not that TKD rests on an ancient indigenous foundation, but that he created it. During the post-Occupation period, he needs it to be ancient, to purge the Japanese influence. During his post-exile career, he needs it to be modern, because that's what it will be if he created it. Two different time periods, two different stories, each appropriate to the needs of the time. In the last phase of his life, his vindication, against the KTA/WTF bureaucracy which at times seems to have tried to make him an 'unperson', in Orwell's wonderful term, is tied up with convincing us that without him there would have been no TKD.

I've read innumerable biographies of 'important' people (no more important than any of us, but somehow they get the reputation for being so, eh? :rolleyes:) And one thing that strikes me, over and over again, is that the views these people express, the positions they take, and the spin they put on their own pasts and that of the people around them and the events they've been involved in, depends a great deal on what is happening to them at the time they're writing whatever it is they're writing, or saying publicly whatever it is they're saying. I've come to the conclusion that this is how people work. It's not cynicism or duplicity; it's the brute-force fact that we structure our picture of the world so that it leads up to our being right about whatever it is we need to be right about in order to be vindicated. I think that's just how people are.
 
Wait,

the Korean's call it Yudo.

I don't see the attack or the issue here though. The politics behind a MA don't dictate the quality of the practitioners. Maybe I don't see it since I don't have a dog in this fight. Overall the argument doesn't really matter except from an academic point of view.

No attack made or intended. My GM (who learned "Korean Karate" in the early 60's) still calls it Korean Karate occasionally.

I have no problem with TKD's roots as Karate & recognizing it as such. I do recognize that it has evolved quite a bit since the 1940's. Heck, it's changed a bunch in my 26 years in TKD.

I am one of the few TKD folks who holds onto my Kwan roots in Chung Do Kwan. I'm blessed enough to know a bit about it & want to continue those traditions (moreso than Olympic-style of the WTF: of which I'm a part, also). I like knowing the Shotokan roots. But the katas that I need to learn are done uniquely from Shotokan. So, my focus is on the way I need to learn them.

I disagree with many who say most folks don't know what TKD is. I run into too many folks who say, "Oh, my 8 year old grandson is a BB." My focus is on doing & teaching solid TKD Chung Do Kwan & redefining what MA is for a lot of folks. A better TKD than what many are used to.
 
No attack made or intended. My GM (who learned "Korean Karate" in the early 60's) still calls it Korean Karate occasionally.

I have no problem with TKD's roots as Karate & recognizing it as such. I do recognize that it has evolved quite a bit since the 1940's. Heck, it's changed a bunch in my 26 years in TKD.

I am one of the few TKD folks who holds onto my Kwan roots in Chung Do Kwan. I'm blessed enough to know a bit about it & want to continue those traditions (moreso than Olympic-style of the WTF: of which I'm a part, also). I like knowing the Shotokan roots. But the katas that I need to learn are done uniquely from Shotokan. So, my focus is on the way I need to learn them.

I disagree with many who say most folks don't know what TKD is. I run into too many folks who say, "Oh, my 8 year old grandson is a BB." My focus is on doing & teaching solid TKD Chung Do Kwan & redefining what MA is for a lot of folks. A better TKD than what many are used to.

I am with you I teach original TKD the way it was tought to me, regardles of what others may beleive. Yes we do Olympic but opur foundation is Tradition, no doubt about it.
 
OK, here are some quotes from Gen. Choi that I found.

Tae Kwon Do Times 2000. Interviewed by GM He Young Kimm.

Gen Choi: I thought about learning how to box but my friend, Kim Hyun- Soo, convinced me to watch a Karate class with him at Dong Dai Sa University. A few days afterwards I began to practice Karate.

On his decision to develop TKD from Karate.

Gen Choi: Furturemore, I included the practice of Tang Soo( Karate) as part of the military training regiman. But my conscience felt shame over the decision to teach Karate. As a man, I dispised the Japanese, so how could I teach Karate to my Korean soldiers. This is when I began my research in the martial arts. I wanted to create a new Korean martial art that was based on scientific movements and contained a mentality to fit Korean Soldiers.

1959, during his visit to Taiwan, his answer to General Yu who suggested that maybe TKD was introduced to Korea from China during the Kija Kingdom in a time before the birth of Christ.

Gen. Choi: Yes, China and Korea have been brother nations throughout our history. But TKD is a new Martial Art created by me in 1955. There was no TKD before Christ. ( This was in 1959. I don't see him drawing any ancient history link)

Tae Kwon Do Times March 1986.

Asked about merging Karate and TKD to form one Olympic event.

Gen. Choi: No,no,no, not possible. To be entirely frank, it would be hopeless to merge Karate with TKD. TKD is TKD and Karate is Karate. How can they play together. The rules are different.

Asked about studying Karate and it's influence on TKD.

Gen. Choi: Certainly, certainly. If I didn't know anything about Karate, I wouldn't have invented techniques that are better than Karate or other MA's.

These next ones are from his biography, Taekwon-Do and I.

A little trivia first. Han Il Dong was not his first calligraphy teacher. Master Ma Do- Sung was. He studied for two years under Master Ma learning Chinese classics and calligraphy.

His second calligraphy teacher was Han Il Dong, lso known as Master Ok- Nam.

On learning Taek-Kyon:

Gen. Choi: The master was good at one of the Korean traditional MA, Taek-Kyon which mostly incorporated moves of the legs only and had a deep understanding of it. He worriedno less than Father about my weak body, so he talked about most winning fights to boost my morale, and although it may be at an elementary level, he himself showed me the basic moves of Taek-Kyon.( doesn't claim to be an expert at this art)

On his Karate training:

Gen. Choi: During the period I was in Tokyo, for 4-5 years, I put every possible effort into practicing Karate, on top of the school or YMCA buildings, because I had Mr. Huh, whom I fought with the day I left, always on my mind.

If electricity poles could have memories, those in the downtown Tokyo would told you how hard I practiced Karate. In a word, there was no pole which escaped my blows and kicks.

On teaching his friend, Yoon Suk Kim.

Gen. Choi: To end his agony, I recommended that he should learn Karate. After that, for six months, I taught him Karate at a practice hall of a nearby Chuo Univesity, and then, he, too hated to pass on electricity pole without hitting it.

I used the quotes from his Bio last since it is the latest information from General Choi. At no time does he deny his Karate connection. At no time does he claim a 2000 plus year history of Taekwon-Do. This is not second or third person but right from General Choi.
 
Exile, you kill me. You take GM. Kim's word as gold when he speaks of General Choi but you give him a pass when he writes the same thing you are dogging Gen. Choi for, 2000 year history.
So if GM Kim took what he learned from GM Song and is using that in his style, that OK, but not for the General, Noooooo. ther's no record of him learning that. Have you ever played baseball, football, basketball? I have. Do I know the basics, yes. Is there a record that I learned how to play? No. General Choi said in his Bio he learned the BASICS of Taek-Kyon. Never did he say he was an expert.
I don't think this is going anywhere so I'll end this now. I've shown that General Choi has not denied his Karate training. I've shown where he doesn't claim a 2000 year history. That's all I can do.

Mike
 
Exile, you kill me. You take GM. Kim's word as gold when he speaks of General Choi but you give him a pass when he writes the same thing you are dogging Gen. Choi for, 2000 year history.
So if GM Kim took what he learned from GM Song and is using that in his style, that OK, but not for the General, Noooooo. ther's no record of him learning that.

I kill you, eh? So you see no difference between (i) a young, junior MAist echoing the party line, at the very beginning of his MA career, and in the course of forty years of research, writing and study realizing how much mythology and nationalist baggage he was carrying, and correcting his description accordingly, and (ii) a man already powerful, and used to the exerise of that power in pushing his own MA operation, who when his mandate was to purge Korean MA of Japanese influence pushed the Taekyon connection, including making references to someone, supposedly a taekyon instructor—who would be on of the few there was around at the time—whose existence the Taekyon Association people themselves are dubious about. And who later, in disgrace in Korea, pushed the equally questionable line that he had himself invented TKD, and (trusting StuartA's recollections here) denied that karate had anything to do with TKD.


Have you ever played baseball, football, basketball? I have. Do I know the basics, yes. Is there a record that I learned how to play? No. General Choi said in his Bio he learned the BASICS of Taek-Kyon. Never did he say he was an expert.

He referred to someone as a teacher, a supposedly very prominent calligrapher, whom no one can find any evidence for, in a part of Korea where taekyon was never practiced (it was, as Song Duk Ki himself emphasized in his book, restricted to an area around Seoul). What does that have to do with learning the basics of anything? At a time when Taekyon was widely misinterpreted as (i) ancient and (ii) a combat system, Gen. Choi stressed its formative role in his training. Later on he stressed his single-handed construction of TKD. I've already suggested why both (compatible) stories made sense at the different times he told them.

The General's invocation of Taekyon is a coding for a supposedly ancient lineage for TKD, one that you can find in the postings of a couple of member of this board, and it has long been understood that way in Korea. If you don't want to see the transparent use of it in Gen. Choi's shifting stories, that's fine with me. The fact is, Gm. Kim specifically identifies the story that Gen. Choi was telling in the 1950s, in the aftermath of the Korean war. He was there, and as you may have gathered from his interview with Rob McLain, he was in a position to know exactly what General Choi was telling him, his fellow MAists and fellow Koreans. Nothing you've said, not one thing, speaks against that.
 
I know we disagree on this exile, but I believe that there is a native korean influence in the Oh Do Kwan, certainly in the hyung. Whilst I accept that the chung do kwan, song moo kwan and many others were entirely karate based at there inception. GM Kim Bok Man says he learned Tosan as a boy. I have never heard anything about karate from him.

One day I would like to ask him about Tosan. I dont believe he would be dishonest though, certainly not in this day and age, having seen what happened to Choi.
 
I know we disagree on this exile, but I believe that there is a native korean influence in the Oh Do Kwan, certainly in the hyung. Whilst I accept that the chung do kwan, song moo kwan and many others were entirely karate based at there inception. GM Kim Bok Man says he learned Tosan as a boy. I have never heard anything about karate from him.

One day I would like to ask him about Tosan. I dont believe he would be dishonest though, certainly not in this day and age, having seen what happened to Choi.

Anything you can find out about this, FD, please post. There's not much time left to recover the truth of what went on then from those who were there, and it would be very worthwhile finding out everything you could possibly get from KBM about that. I've heard of Tosan, but I've never been able to run down any detailed description or presentation of its content. So anything, anything at all, would be very informtive and welcome....
 
Anything you can find out about this, FD, please post. There's not much time left to recover the truth of what went on then from those who were there, and it would be very worthwhile finding out everything you could possibly get from KBM about that. I've heard of Tosan, but I've never been able to run down any detailed description or presentation of its content. So anything, anything at all, would be very informtive and welcome....

I agree FD it would be worth it if you could ask him.
 
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