- Thread Starter
- #121
As for GM Kims interview, I've read it over and over and GM Kim says Gen Choi brought up the Korean history but doesn't say that General Choi associated that to TKD.
I think further comment is superfluous, at this point...
Now can we please get back to the issue??
For example, here's a hypothesis, picking up on Errant's idea and some of the earlier posts... the advocates of a given Korean MA style will insist on linking it to a mythical ancient past to a degree of shamelessness corresponding to their location in the Korean MA institutional hierarchy.
This would I think apply correctly to both the top-dog KKW/WTF TKD (in his 1997 JAMA paper, referenced directly, Dakin Burdick cites a typically hair-raising abuse of the archæological material to this effect on the WTF website) and to TSD, banished from the realm with Hwang Kee as a consequence of his institutional quarrel with Gen. Choi; readers who want to see some of the not-very-nice details can find them in Burdick's 1997 article 'People and Events of Taekwondo's formative years', in Journal of Asian Martial Arts 6.1). The interesting test case here would be the official ITF line (or lines, given the fragmentation in the organization). I need to check on this.... more later.
OK—from their website:
On April 11th, 1955, the name Taekwon-Do was officially adopted for the martial art General Choi Hong Hi had developed using elements of the ancient Korean martial art of Taek Kyon and of Shotokan karate, a martial art he had learned while studying in Japan.
So: more of the stuff about the `ancient' (= early 19th century) `Korean' (though in fact played in Japan as well, according to Stuart Culin's 1895 monograph on Korean games) `martial art' (though Son Duk Ki himself, in his book, identifies it as a village competition game, just as Culin characterized it more than a century ago when it was still being played, though it was already disappearing fast). But they also identify TKD as 'the martial art General Choi... had developed'. So, like the General, still having it both ways: ancient Korean roots, and his own personal invention, both.
I'm not sure how the hypothesis I've suggested above should be evaluated with respect to this particular origin myth... any thoughts?