Renewed faith in Kukki- Taekwondo

[IcemanSK]

I went to the Hanmadang 2008 in Anaheim, CA for two of the 4 days. There were a lot of grumblings that folks weren't coming (it had about 1000 competitors vs. the 3000 in previous years). While it could have been a much bigger event, it was still fantastic!

I met Grandmaster Lee, Kyu Hyung (head of the Korean National demonstration team) & Grandmaster Suh, Joong Keun (1992 US Olympic coach). Both we amazing & humble men.

I saw some great demonstrations, poomsae from children that helped me realize how much I need to work on mine, & granite breaking that gave me a whole new appreciation for kyukpa!

It was great to see the Art of Taekwondo shown from the Kukkiwon in this manner.

 

[terryl965]

Iceman can you give us a complete rundown of the two days that you was there. Did they do open and Olympic sparring, how was the demostrtions of proper techniques handle? Did they go over all the new rechniques of the poomsae's? How about Self Defense, was there anything new?

I am glad you had a great time and I know you may not be able to answer some of these wuestion but I figure it would not hurt to ask.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

Ah, wish I could have been there! Sounds like a great event! Details please, so that I may live vicariously!

Daniel

 

[IcemanSK]

Iceman can you give us a complete rundown of the two days that you was there. Did they do open and Olympic sparring, how was the demostrtions of proper techniques handle? Did they go over all the new rechniques of the poomsae's? How about Self Defense, was there anything new?

I am glad you had a great time and I know you may not be able to answer some of these wuestion but I figure it would not hurt to ask.

Sorry I didn't include more detail, previously. I shall add a bit more as I have time.

There was no sparring at all at this event at all. It was all WTF poomsae, creative poomsae, self-defense, & breaking. It was as team & individual competitions. There was no explaination of techniques. The demos & SD were done like your school would do them for a large crowd...big & flashy.

Ernie Reyes & the West Coast Demo team (I can't remember what he calls it now) performed on Friday as part of the opening ceremonies (not competing, however). Their demo was great & excited all the Korean University demo teams. There was another amazing guy at the opening ceremonies who did aerial breaks while blindfolded. His holders moved around him with bells signaling where they were. The last target was an apple on a knife! It was incredible!

The breaking granite (with a knifehand strike) is apparently a Hanmadang thing. I figured it would be the type of thing where most who attempted would break their stacks. I was wrong. There was only one who broke amount that he intended too. Granite ain't as easy to break as concrete.

They had a metal board holder for the "foot breaking" contest. If you've seen video of other year's Hanmadang, you've seen this device. Contestants could use either a spinning back kick or sliding side kick to break. This device was unforgiving. If you hit them correctly & hard enough, the boards broke. If not, they didn't got anywhere!

Most attempted 8+ boards in the device. One guy, who could have more than 20 year's old, broke 10 with a spinning back kick like it was nothing. Even the judges were impressed!

The crowd favorite was GM Suh, Joong Keun (9th Dan 71 year's old & the only 9th Dan competing!) He broke 4 boards with beautiful sliding side kick & the crowd went crazy! He could sat on the sidelines on all of his accomplishments but he didn't. He also competed later in poomsae (doing Ilyeo, of course) which I didn't see because it was getting late. During his practice, he kept asking me how his form looked. If you never get a chance to see a 71 year old man do a jump side kick (one with the left & one with the right leg) I'd reccomend watching him. For the record, it looked great each time he did it.

More later & if you want to know about specific things, I'll try to answer them.

 

[YoungMan]

The Hanmadang does not include sparring because the perception is that the WTF/Kukkiwon does enough of that.
I've seen clips of Hanmadang technique. Anyone who thinks Kukkiwon Taekwondo has no power should watch these guys. There are the requisite jumping/flying breaks. But there are also granite/marble breaks to show that Taekwondo does indeed use power.
I would love to see a 71 year old man show jumping side kicks with both legs, but I'm not keen on a 9th Dan competing. What does he have to prove?

 

[Tryak]

Do you have any pics or videos or links to any? I would love to see some of this.

 

[terryl965]

Thanks Iceman for the additional information.

 

[Kacey]

Sounds like it was a great event!

 

[IcemanSK]

Here's Ernie Reyes' crew at opeing ceremonies.

Breaking prelims. They used plastic tiles in the prelims & clay for the finals.
Plastic slides as you can see.

 

[terryl965]

Here's Ernie Reyes' crew at opeing ceremonies.

Breaking prelims. They used plastic tiles in the prelims & clay for the finals.
Plastic slides as you can see.

GM Reyes has an awesome team saw them a few times.

 

[YoungMan]

Too Hollywood for me.

 

[terryl965]

Too Hollywood for me.

Well it was down the street from there

 

[YoungMan]

Well if it was down the street, I'd have gone myself just to see what it was like. How could you resist?

 

[mango.man]

Does anyone know anyone that actually competed in any of the Hanmadang events?

Here is 1 report that not everything went so smoothly:

I haven't seen anyone comment on the Hanmadang from this weekend. Am I the only one that is disappointed in the the quality and professionalism of this event? In my 6 years of taking my kids to TKD events, I've been to local tournaments that were run better than that! My daughter sat on that floor for 7 HOURS waiting for her event and then after competing with 30 girls, they were told that there wasn't going to be finals because there wasn't enough time. After the competitors protested, they took the top NINE girls for the final. My daughter was in a four way tie for ninth place, they took the first girl that received that score and sent the rest home! How is that fair? It seems to me that they could have at least taken those 4 girls and had a run off to decide who made the final and not used the luck of the draw to decide who went to the finals. The program said there were 18 girls in that division not 30. My daughter then competed in the pairs finals. On thursday there were 9 pairs in the prelims, on Saturday there were 10 pairs for the finals, how does that work?? I know for a fact that people showed up for that event that had not signed up, they made a big fuss like the event had made a mistake and got registered without even paying! We really expected more from the people that are supposed to be the benchmark for our sport, and after this marathon fiasco ( that wasn't exactly cheap ) I doubt that we will bother to do this tournament again.

I am just wondering if these examples were maybe blown out of proportion or if this report is accurate. The site I got it from is primarily posted to by those that were not necessarily very supportive of Sang Lee's efforts and therefore the above report is perhaps skewed by the OP's negative perception going it.

 

[terryl965]

Does anyone know anyone that actually competed in any of the Hanmadang events?

Here is 1 report that not everything went so smoothly:



I am just wondering if these examples were maybe blown out of proportion or if this report is accurate. The site I got it from is primarily posted to by those that were not necessarily very supportive of Sang Lee's efforts and therefore the above report is perhaps skewed by the OP's negative perception going it.

Yea I saw alot of reports that it was bad, but Iceman was there and saw some great events and had a wonderful time. What I heard from some IR's is it was terrible on the floor for every competitor. That is too bad since all the demo's went so well.

 

[IcemanSK]

Does anyone know anyone that actually competed in any of the Hanmadang events?

Here is 1 report that not everything went so smoothly:



I am just wondering if these examples were maybe blown out of proportion or if this report is accurate. The site I got it from is primarily posted to by those that were not necessarily very supportive of Sang Lee's efforts and therefore the above report is perhaps skewed by the OP's negative perception going it.

While it was a great event to watch, this report is quite true. Many of the poomsae contestants waited for quite a few hours to compete. (7 hours from the time they were called wouldn't surprise me). I was surprised that for an event of 1000 competitors, it wasn't handled well. Had they had the 3500 competitors that show up at previous Hanmadangs been there, it would have been a train wreck.

I'm quite sure it won't be held in the US again due to low attendance & the way it was run.