Kta

[exile]

Good question. I would imagine ego had a bit to do with it. However, the fact that various schools were vying for government support probably had something to do with it as well. Keep in mind, this was after WWII and the Korean War, resources were at a premium, and, unlike Japan, nations weren't putting strategies to help rebuild Korea. It truly was like the Old West, with people and organizations settling disputes and grievances the old fashioned way-with their fists (and feet). Add Tae Kwon Do to the mix and it makes for a very interesting situation.

That has the ring of truth... but I can't help feeling as though there was more to it than that. What I mean is, it seems as though right from the get-go, the MA situation in Korea was institutionally competitive and focused on a tapline from the Korean government. But why would the Korean government have that much of a stake in the fledgling Korean MA scene?? My take on the situation, based on the historical research I've cited elsewhere, is that the Japanese training the Kwan founders received in Japan and brought back to Korea shortly before WWII represented the first major infusion in generations, if not centuries, of new material into an essentially moribund Korean MA scene (and for anyone reading who wants to bring up taekkyon, check out both Dakin Burdick's 2000 online article at http://www.budosportcapelle.ml/gesch.html, which synthesizes his 1997 Journal of Asian Martial Arts article with new material, as well as Robert McLain's interview with Gm. Kim in our own MT Magazine archives; you'll see that taekkyon was totally moribund at that point and that no one, including Gen. Choi, was actually doing it or had any instructional connection to it). Why would the Korean government have taken that much interest in something which, at that point certainly, must have seemed an exotic specialized interest far removed from what the professional soldiers in the Korean military were used to and what the civil servants would have been familiar with?

My own take on it has to do with the role that Gen. Choi played, a high-ranking officer with a lot of clout in an essentially military government, who was also a devotee of a particular strand in the evolving fabric of KMA. The reason I think this extra factor is necessary to the explanation is that it's not clear to me why else the government support you mention should have been an issue in the first place... I've never thought that the Japanese government itself played much of a role wrt the native (or imported) MAs either during the war or the postwar period; similarly in China and Indonesia. What was the Korean government doing in the first place that made competition for its support a part of the Korean MA scene, as vs. everywhere else? The Kwans would have squabbled amongst themselves the way the various ryu did in various MAs in Japan, without any government involvement, except that something extra was added to the mix. What was it?

I'm putting my money on the General, but could there be other, better explanations?

 

[TraditionalTKD]

In all honesty I don't know. It's something I could ask our GM when I get the chance. However, I have a sneaking suspicion his attitude will be it's something that was in the past and not really relevant to the here and now. What caused the various kwans to have such intense and physical rivalries when other schools in other countries did not have these I really don't know.
I would not be surprised if Gen. Choi did have something to do with it. Based on his influence at the time, it is very likely that he was in a position to help some kwans (Chung Do Kwan, Song Moo Kwan, Jung Do Kwan, Oh Do Kwan), and hurt others (pretty much all the rest). So I imagine there would be some resentment. Just a theory.

 

[exile]

In all honesty I don't know. It's something I could ask our GM when I get the chance. However, I have a sneaking suspicion his attitude will be it's something that was in the past and not really relevant to the here and now. What caused the various kwans to have such intense and physical rivalries when other schools in other countries did not have these I really don't know.
I would not be surprised if Gen. Choi did have something to do with it. Based on his influence at the time, it is very likely that he was in a position to help some kwans (Chung Do Kwan, Song Moo Kwan, Jung Do Kwan, Oh Do Kwan), and hurt others (pretty much all the rest). So I imagine there would be some resentment. Just a theory.

There's some excellent reason to believe that Gen. Choi used his military position in the ROK armed forces to offer soft assignments during the Korean War to KMA masters who would switch to his organization and to make, let's say, other kinds of assignments to those who balked—check out Master McLain's interview with Gm. Kim at the MT Magazine from a few months back. We also know that Hwang Kee's house was mysteriously torched during the early 1970s during his dispute with the General's KTA, and that the latter used a number of what would be considered `dirty tricks' (mass retesting of BBs, attempts to get rival organizations decertified) based on Gen. Choi's enormous clout within the Park military dictatorship (Dakin Burdick's 1997 Journal of Asian Martial Arts contains the unpleasant details and documentation). So it's clear that his own ferocious advocacy, and willingness to play the hardest hardball there is, probably injected a lot of adversarial hostility into the proceedings.

But I have this nagging sense that more was involved. I don't believe that the personal agenda of a single person, regardless of their prominence and power, can completely determine a whole cultural model in any particular domain of activity, and it seems to me pretty clear that the Korean model of MA organization—top-down, organization-driven, centrally planned—is profoundly different from the school-driven, many-paths, experimental career that Karate, Jiujitsu, Aikido and other Japanese arts have taken. It's not just TKD; look at the Tang Soo Do/Soo Bahk Do thread—it's the same story there: top-down mass revision of curricula and technical content, and if you don't like it, there's the door. I'm not saying anything at all about whether the outcomes in particular cases are for the best (or not), and I'm not really concerned with the physical conflicts amongst the various Kwans; I suspect that those conflicts were an expression of whatever was going on that underlies the Korean MA model—I'm just trying to gain a sense of what social forces led to this very different model.

 

[rmclain]

Hey Robert, did you ever get a copy of that ms. I sent you?

Sorry for the late response! No, I never received it. Please send to my personal e-mail [email protected] and cc a copy to [email protected]

Thank you very much!

R. McLain

 

[exile]

Sorry for the late response! No, I never received it. Please send to my personal e-mail [email protected] and cc a copy to [email protected]

Thank you very much!

R. McLain

OK, I will—should be arriving any time now!

 

[Dave Leverich]

Exile, if it's not too much hassle, I would love an email of it as well.
I've been delving into the history of the different kwans, as well as trying to get an accurate 'who went where' once TKD hit the US soil... this would definitely seem to help (even if simply forcing me to ask more questions).

dave(at)atacards.com for the address if you can share.

 

[exile]

Exile, if it's not too much hassle, I would love an email of it as well.
I've been delving into the history of the different kwans, as well as trying to get an accurate 'who went where' once TKD hit the US soil... this would definitely seem to help (even if simply forcing me to ask more questions).

dave(at)atacards.com for the address if you can share.

Hi David—glad to!

Bear in mind, it's a compilation of other people's research and so on from a variety of sources, together with my own best guess at the lesson TKD history bears for its practice—what we do with it at this time and place. But sure, I'll be glad to forward it to you...

...and I'd be very happy to see any results you turn up on kwan history and its subsequent development in N. America, along the lines you mention.

Should be in your mailer sometime later this morning...

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

One is interesting though is that this top down methodology that Exile is talking about is still very much in use and is also extremely popular throughout America and the world. The Korean method of running a Dojang successfully and making it a business that flocks of people come to is rather amazing. Contrasted with other systems which have many issues attracting and keeping students.

General Choi clearly used some rather hard ball type of tactic's early on and continued to use them later on. I have witnessed at least one really hard ball tactic that what used with one of my instructor's. (really hard ball) In the end the tactic was unsuccessful and amends were made but
clearly hard ball tactics were used by General Choi and the KTA and then later in the ITF.

 

[exile]

One is interesting though is that this top down methodology that Exile is talking about is still very much in use and is also extremely popular throughout America and the world. The Korean method of running a Dojang successfully and making it a business that flocks of people come to is rather amazing. Contrasted with other systems which have many issues attracting and keeping students.

General Choi clearly used some rather hard ball type of tactic's early on and continued to use them later on. I have witnessed at least one really hard ball tactic that what used with one of my instructor's. (really hard ball) In the end the tactic was unsuccessful and amends were made but
clearly hard ball tactics were used by General Choi and the KTA and then later in the ITF.

Absolutely right. Anyone who doubts the accuracy of this assessment of Gen. Choi's any-means-necessary campaign to dominate the KMA scene during the generation following the Korean War need only look at Rober McLain's interview with Gm. Kim in our own MT Magazine, or check out Dakin Burdick's 1997 JAMA article on the emergence of TKD in the modern era. Some it is out-and-out disturbing...

And on the top-down model in the US: it's striking, isn't it, how in the US, the land of rambunctious do-your-own-thing individualism, there is such a huge emphasis on organization-level determinations of dojo/dojang curriculum and practice... maybe it's connected with something along the lines of `lineage-envy'? From what Tez and other U.K. based posters have said, I get the sense that the Brits are far more relaxed about this stuff than we are on this side of the pond.

Here's a case in point: Stuart Anslow is the owner/operator of the Rayner's Lane dojang in Middlesex, UK. It's fully ITF affiliated... but the curriculum is completely bunkai-based and centers on Anslow's pioneering work in the practical combat applications of ITF TKD. He's involved with the network of MAs school centered on Iain Abernethy's dojo and extended bunkai-jutsu research project, and his focus is probably a good deal more on the input of the British Combat Association, which brings together a diversity of combat arts to benefit from each other's experience (the kind of thing I see emerging with Brian's own IRT schools and their connections to other arts and individual MA schools). I myself think this is the model of TMA development of the future, predicated on a return to training the hard fighting roots of the TMAs. But what's so interesting to me is how... relaxed the UK MAs schools seem to be about this. That intensity of organizational factionalism and internal rivalry... well, maybe it's there, but it's very far from obvious, at this distance anyway.

I think the U.K. approach is going to become more prevalent as time goes by.... maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I hope not!

 

[Kacey]

Sorry for the late response! No, I never received it. Please send to my personal e-mail [email protected] and cc a copy to [email protected]

Thank you very much!

R. McLain

Exile, if it's not too much hassle, I would love an email of it as well.
I've been delving into the history of the different kwans, as well as trying to get an accurate 'who went where' once TKD hit the US soil... this would definitely seem to help (even if simply forcing me to ask more questions).

dave(at)atacards.com for the address if you can share.

Exile, I would appreciate a copy as well, if you don't mind - you can send it to me at [email protected], if you'd be willing.

 

[Laurentkd]

Exile, I would appreciate a copy as well, if you don't mind - you can send it to me at [email protected], if you'd be willing.

Same here if it is not too much trouble!
[email protected]

 

[exile]

Exile, I would appreciate a copy as well, if you don't mind - you can send it to me at [email protected], if you'd be willing.

Gladly, Kacey. Let me know when it gets there.

Have mailed you one too, Lauren.