Poomse and belt ranking

[exile]

I find it very interesting the differences between schools and belt ranks. I have heard of schools even using a green camo belt for a rank.

I've heard of that too... wasn't there a thread quite some time ago on MT about camo belts? I'm sure I'm not making that up...

At my school though we learn palgwes as color belts and taeguks as black belts along with several other forms like koryo, ohop, and taeyung.

Right, another case of Taegeuks as BB forms... but it seems to TraditionalTDK, various other people on other threads, and me that the Palgwes have more depth and complexity than the Taegeuks. Anyone have any inkling what the rationale might be for using the Palgwes for colored belt ranking while reserving the Taegeuks for Dan ranking??

 

[bluemtn]

Ok- found a list of black belt forms (sorry- don't know for what ranks):

Ship Soo
Chul Gi 2
Yun Bee
Ja On
Chinto
Chul Gi 3
Kang Sang Koon Dae
Kang Sang Koon Sho

I think one is an alternative for another, but don't know which.

For testing for brown belt, I had to be able to do all forms from white belt through purple belt. There is also 2 ranks per belt color, but just one color for those 2 ranks (with the exception of black, of course).

 

[TraditionalTKD]

I've heard of that too... wasn't there a thread quite some time ago on MT about camo belts? I'm sure I'm not making that up...




Right, another case of Taegeuks as BB forms... but it seems to TraditionalTDK, various other people on other threads, and me that the Palgwes have more depth and complexity than the Taegeuks. Anyone have any inkling what the rationale might be for using the Palgwes for colored belt ranking while reserving the Taegeuks for Dan ranking??

Possibly to stay in good with the Kukkiwon. That'd be my best guess. What many people don't seem to realize is that, while the Taegeuks are used exclusively for Tae Kwon Do in Korea, it is perfectly permissible for Instructors outside Korea to teach the Palgue forms. The Kukkiwon website does acknowlege the Palgues, though to be honest, they are considered secondary to the Taegeuks. They are, however, still taught outside Korea, primarily by older organizations.

 

[exile]

Possibly to stay in good with the Kukkiwon. That'd be my best guess. What many people don't seem to realize is that, while the Taegeuks are used exclusively for Tae Kwon Do in Korea, it is perfectly permissible for Instructors outside Korea to teach the Palgue forms. The Kukkiwon website does acknowlege the Palgues, though to be honest, they are considered secondary to the Taegeuks. They are, however, still taught outside Korea, primarily by older organizations.

Yes, eventually somewhere along the line it finally dawned on me that if you want to do stuff that the KKW doesn't mandate, you can still do it but you're not supposed to omit anything that they insist you teach. You can probably teach the Pyang-Ahns if you want, or Naihanchi even... as long as you teach the Taegeuks. OK, I get that...

... but what strikes me as very odd is that someone would come up with a way to placate the KKW by taking the primo set of colored belt forms and making them dan forms as a way of deflecting the wrath expected from the KKW because a secondary color-belt form was being actively taught... it just seems so crazy! I've no doubt you're right about the motivation... but it just seems so bizarre...

I mean, the alternative, if you really have your heart set on teaching the Palgwes but want to avoid any appearance of giving offense to the KKW curriculum, is to teach both Palgwe and Taegeuk Il Jang at yellow, say; both Palgwe and Taegeuk Ii Jang at green, and so on. Somehow that seems to me to make more sense than repackaging a high-numbered gup form as a low-numbered dan form...

 

[TraditionalTKD]

On the other hand, our organization is based outside Korea and we have NEVER practiced the Tae Geuk forms. So I'm not sure if placating the Kukkiwon is even a valid point. If it were, I'm sure our Grandmaster would have gotten a letter from the KKW asking why he is not teaching the Tae Geuks as part of the forms curriculum. To my knowledge he has not. His Instructor is Mr. Uhm, so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[zDom]

On the other hand, our organization is based outside Korea and we have NEVER practiced the Tae Geuk forms. So I'm not sure if placating the Kukkiwon is even a valid point. If it were, I'm sure our Grandmaster would have gotten a letter from the KKW asking why he is not teaching the Tae Geuks as part of the forms curriculum. To my knowledge he has not. His Instructor is Mr. Uhm, so maybe that has something to do with it.

GGM Uhm, president of Kukkiwon and head of Chung Do Kwan?

Who is your GM, btw?

 

[Drusilla]

9th gup (white belt/yellow stripe): Saju Tchrigi (4 direction punch), Saju Maki (4 direction block)
8th gup (yellow belt): Chon-ji
7th gup (yellow belt/green stripe): Dan-gun
6th gup (green belt): Do-san
5th gup (green belt/blue stripe): Won-hyo
4th gup (blue belt): Yul-gok
3rd gup (blue belt/red stripe): Joong-gun
2nd gup (red belt): Toi-Gye
1st gup (red belt/black stripe): Hwa-rang
1st dan (black belt): Choong-mu

After that, there are 3 belts per rank through 5th dan, then 2 more for 6th dan, and 1 for 7th dan, for a total of 24 - the number of hours in a day, which therefore stands for an entire life. There's also a "revenant" pattern (Ko-Dan, left over from when Juche replaced it - we learn that one for 3rd dan) which we also learn, out of respect for the history of the art.

Of course, there're a lot of other requirements at each rank in addition to the patterns - each rank has hand techniques, kicks, self-defense (mostly releases, controls, throws, and sweeps), step sparring, free sparring, and breaking, along with knowledge requirements.

That's pretty much identical to our syllabus up to 1st Dan black belt. I don't know a lot about what happens after then as I'm only a yellow belt myself and am having enough trouble remembering my parts!
This is really trivial, but your spellings of the Korean terminology is different to ours, we use "Sajo Jirugi", "Sajo Makgi" and "Choong Moo", but that's only in how they're spelt, there's never been any emphasis on that, as long as the pronounciation is similar.

However, we do tend to talk about it like this:
10th Kup - Sajo Jirugi/Makgi
9th Kup - Chon-Ji
8th Kup - Dan Gun
7th Kup - Do San
6th Kup - Won Hyo
5th Kup - Yul Gok
4th Kup - Joong Gun
3rd Kup - Toi Gye
2nd Kup - Hwa Rang
1st Kup - Choong Moo
as in, that's the pattern you need to learn to progress to the next belt.

I find it fascinating how everyone's syllabus is different when we're all learning the same art.

 

[Kacey]

That's pretty much identical to our syllabus up to 1st Dan black belt. I don't know a lot about what happens after then as I'm only a yellow belt myself and am having enough trouble remembering my parts!
This is really trivial, but your spellings of the Korean terminology is different to ours, we use "Sajo Jirugi", "Sajo Makgi" and "Choong Moo", but that's only in how they're spelt, there's never been any emphasis on that, as long as the pronounciation is similar.

However, we do tend to talk about it like this:
10th Kup - Sajo Jirugi/Makgi
9th Kup - Chon-Ji
8th Kup - Dan Gun
7th Kup - Do San
6th Kup - Won Hyo
5th Kup - Yul Gok
4th Kup - Joong Gun
3rd Kup - Toi Gye
2nd Kup - Hwa Rang
1st Kup - Choong Moo
as in, that's the pattern you need to learn to progress to the next belt.

I find it fascinating how everyone's syllabus is different when we're all learning the same art.

Ah, another Ch'ang H'on stylist! The spellings are different because they are phonetic transliterations from another alphabet - I've seen the spellings you use as well as the ones I used in this post, and, in fact, use many of them interchangeably. The syllabus is different because there were originally 9 kwans in TKD, each with its own syllabus - if you search the TKD forum using "kwan" as your search term, you'll come up with lots of information about the history that led to our current associations, organizations, and syllabi.