Tae Kyon -vs- Tae Kwon Do

Marginal

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From what I've read, TaeKyon was more of a festival game than a MA. Quick description would be a form of leg wrestling.

TKD evolved from Karate with an altered emphasis on the superiority of the leg vs the arm as fighting tools. Some say this was influenced by TaeKyon, but such ties are sketchy.

Kinda like asking what the difference is between indian leg wrestling and BJJ...
 

bignick

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ppko said:
Now I don't know this for sure but I heard that Tae Kwon Do came from Tae Kyon
Not from what I know. From what I understand Tae Kyon was a form of leg and foot fighting focusing on leg locks, trips, sweeps, and so forth...

Like Marginal said, TKD's emphasis on kicking could be influenced by Tae Kyon, but Tae Kwon Do has strong roots in Japanese Karate...
 

Miles

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bignick said:
Not from what I know. From what I understand Tae Kyon was a form of leg and foot fighting focusing on leg locks, trips, sweeps, and so forth...

Like Marginal said, TKD's emphasis on kicking could be influenced by Tae Kyon, but Tae Kwon Do has strong roots in Japanese Karate...
TKD was strongly influenced by both TaeKyon and Karate-do. The rhythmic bouncing and footwork you see in Olympic sparring is similar to TaeKyon which used a sort of in-out pattern. Incidentally, I met an ex-pat American living in Seoul who trains in TaeKyon-it is a very formal demanding sport practiced primarily by adults.

Miles
 

The Kai

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Miles said:
TKD was strongly influenced by both TaeKyon and Karate-do. The rhythmic bouncing and footwork you see in Olympic sparring is similar to TaeKyon which used a sort of in-out pattern. Incidentally, I met an ex-pat American living in Seoul who trains in TaeKyon-it is a very formal demanding sport practiced primarily by adults.

Miles
The rhythmic bouncing did'nt really appear until the 90's, it is not really a influence to the myth of taekyon but the idea of tKD after the 90's
Todd
 

Miles

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The Kai said:
The rhythmic bouncing did'nt really appear until the 90's, it is not really a influence to the myth of taekyon but the idea of tKD after the 90's
Todd
Sorry Todd, I don't understand the last half of your comment. Could you rephrase?

Miles
 

Marginal

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I think The Kai was saying that the bouncing sparring style in TKD is a relatively recent development, which would make the claims of TKD developing directly from Taekyon shaky.

Seems more likely that if Taekyon had much influence on TKD, it happened recently, and not as much during TKD's formative process.
 

The Kai

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I'm sorry, I meant that the bouncing started to tke place after the 90 (ish) when the powers that be decided to make TKD finally look different from karate.

Todd
 

MichiganTKD

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Actually, several of the forms of our style (WTF) seem to have Tae Kyon-influenced techniques:

1. The double kick in Koryo, designed to check an opponent's leg then kick his face. Tae Kyon used leg checking kicks.

2. In Palgue Chil, the 360-degree pivot followed by the stomp could be interpreted as lifting an opponent's leg then stomping the other one. Emphasis on could.

3. The diamond block from Kumgang was taken from the Kumgang Yuksa warrior.

4. One of our one-steps consists of a tiger mouth to the throat followed by a leg sweep. It is known Tae Kwon practiced this.

It was known that Won Kuk Lee (I think Gen. Choi as well) studied Tae Kyon. Therefore, Tae kwon Do would undoubtably have these techniques in its curriculum.
 

The Kai

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TKD came from Shotokan Karate, of which Choi was a 3rd degree Black Belt in. Choi also admitted to having never seen Tae Kyon - only hearing the word from his tailor.

Of course you can "reverse engineer" and come up with movements in forms that look similiar to Tae Kyon, but know that all the movements you've descibed are in my art to!
Todd
 

MichiganTKD

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But Lee did study Tae Kyon. The impression I get is that Chung Do Kwan actually incorporates more elements from Tae Kyon, while the other styles are more karate based. If you look at the backgrounds of the non-CDK kwan heads, few if any of them studied Tae Kyon or Korean arts. All of them were karate or kung fu trained, including Hwang Kee and the others.

And Gen. Choi was notorious for revising his personal history, as well as Tae Kwon Do history for his own conveniences. He claimed at one time to have studied Tae Kyon, then admitted to have not studied it. He also claimed to have invented tae Kwon Do and created the name, although the evidence for both is shaky at best. Contributed to, yes.

However, realize that tae Kwon Do is not Tae Kyon, the same as an M-16 is not a black powder rifle. One owes a debt to the other, but is a descendant, not the actual item.
 

The Kai

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Won Kuk Lee also studied Shotokan (up to 3rd degree), even if there was same Tae kyon going on -the fact is the largest base is stil karate
Todd
 

bignick

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Nothing develops in a void...I'm sure that there are some influences of tae kyon in taekwondo. Just as there are strong influences of karate. Karate itself was strongly influenced by Chinese martial arts. Chinese martial arts may or may not have been influenced by India, depending on what stories you believe...

Nothing is completely original...is taekwondo influenced by tae kyon, sure, two martial arts being practiced in the same country had to have affected each other. So how do we know that the stuff in tkd that looks like it might have come from tae kyon didn't actually develop as a result of taekwondo being practiced side by side with tae kyon...or tang soo do, soo bahk, and so on...

Tracing how things like different arts affected the development of others can be fascinating, but don't expect everyone to agree with your interpretation
 

Miles

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The Kai said:
I'm sorry, I meant that the bouncing started to tke place after the 90 (ish) when the powers that be decided to make TKD finally look different from karate.

Todd
Thanks for the clarification, but the bouncing has been in TKD sparring since well before the 90s. I've seen films of the early 60s and it was present at that time-yes, in part to distinguish TKD from Karate.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Miles
 

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