Taekkyon

[terryl965]

This is taken from the Kukkiwon Text Book:

I thopught this might be an interesting subject and we could expand on it.As the art of taekkyon was popularized in Koguro, it was also handed down to Silla which is justified by the following points of views;

1) Hwarang (or sonrang) in Silla has the same meaning with the word
"sonbae" in Koguryo by indicating both the youth Warrior's corp from their etymological origins.

2) Bothhwarang and sonbae had the same organizations and hierarchical structure with each other.

3) According to historical records, as sonbaes in Koguryo used to compete in taekkyon games at the time of their national festivals, hwarang in Silla also played taekkyon games (subak, dokkyoni or taekkoni) at such festivals as "palkwanhoe" and "hankawi" , thussystematically developing the ancient fighting techniques into the taekkyon (or sonbae) as the basis of martial arts by around A.D. 200. From the 4th century the hwarangs took the takkyon lesson as a systemized martial art at their learning house to make it also popularized among ordinary people, so much so that their techniques where depicted on the mural paintings of ancient warrior tombs.
Again, it is also true that taekkyon, coming down to Silla, was further developed into a school of martial art with the division of techniques, I.E. bare-handed techniques and foot techniques, which can be proved by the fact that both hand and foot techniques are clearly shown in teh ancient sculptures and buddhistic statues.

What is everyone thought on this?

 

[tellner]

My thought is that this has been dealt with in excruciating detail in other threads. Exile has done yeoman service in debunking the myths. Every time he does you or someone else reposts them uncritically in another thread.

 

[YoungMan]

What do I think? I think Korea has spent the last 40 years or so bringing Taekwondo back in line with how martial arts used to be in Korea. Similar to a man stricken with amnesia slowly rediscovering who he really is.
Taekwondo today is very much the descendent of Taekkyon, if the techniques I have seen are any indication.
And the fact that this issue won't die, despite exile's best efforts to kill it, are an indication that many of us are not satisfied with his answers and "proof". We are not delusional or revisionist, we see things that just don't jibe with his version of history.

 

[arnisador]

I don't think it's just his version...it's the accepted version by academics who have studied it.

 

[tellner]

YM, Exile has provided the best research anyone has. He's got documentation out the wazoo. He's got historical documents, tons of refereed academic papers, and top notch scholarship. It even includes the considered statements of the Taekyon community then and now. All you have is derisive quotation marks and blind faith that whatever the Korean government tells you must be the Truth.

"I want it to be true because it makes me feel good about myself" is no substitute for evidence. His position is backed by the evidence. You and the rest of your crew have offered nothing but wishful thinking.

 

[terryl965]

So you believe all of this to be made up, I guess that is that then. We all know somebody inerpitation has more value than anything else. This is why I post things like this, people will and can take a statement and make it fit into anything and believe it. I know one old Korean here in the DFW area that can speak from what his GM told him amd his linage but why beleive soem Korean guy that grew up there because you know all these anericans and eroupe people are absolutely right. I am not trying to start WW3 here just looking into the other side of things.

 

[JWLuiza]

I really don't have a bone to pick with either side here, but from MY EXPERIENCE (not generalizable to anyone else's) older Koreans were either lied to or lied about martial arts in Korea in the post-war era.

Let's move on to other discussions because we're beating a dead horse and no one is changing their mind.

 

[tkd1964]

The problem that history has right now is that Half of Korea is shut off. Only half is available to historians now. The best place to look at the history are the Temples which have volumes of historical writings. As for North Korea, I don't know how many temples are left and for that matter, how much information is left. The people are left clueless there and the leader is looked to as a God. I would suspect that the ancient history would have been destroyed. Juche is the only religion.

Mike

 

[YoungMan]

That's a good point. Unfortunately, many of the resources we might otherwise use to prove or disprove history are off limits to us because they are now in North Korea. Alays been my dream to visit the Kumgang Mountains; but because they are in the North that's unlikely.

 

[jim777]

Let's move on to other discussions because we're beating a dead horse and no one is changing their mind.

Amen to that! We should sponsor a 'history discussion-free' summer :lol:

 

[exile]

Sigh... I'm not sure why I'm doing this, because it's not going to change anything, apparently. One of the working diagnostics of insanity is the belief that if you do the same thing you've done repeatedly before, you'll get a different result this time. Since I'm not insane, that must mean I don't really expect a different outcome in this discussion... which I do think is true.

Nonetheless, some kind of response seems called for, because silence is often taken to give consent, and what the KKW has in its textbook is not history but a 'folk history' story calibrated to the ambitions of the ROK and expoiting the nationalist resonances of the work taekkyon. The point is developed in detail in Eric Madis' excellent study of the emergence of this constructed history in his article 'The evolution of Taekwondo from Japanese Karate' (for sources of all the citations below, please see this post). Given the degree of personal resentment expressed by people in these discussions who somehow dislike the fact that a large number of trained historians have examined this constructed history and found it historically baseless—and who then somehow connect those historians' documented, well-supported conclusion with the fact that I've only been training in TKD for five years or so—I feel as though I have to say something explicitly that should be obvious: I'm just the messanger. None of the research I report here is my original research. Whether or not you like my take on how TKD should be seen, or dislike my indifference to the Korean nationalist, political and economic agendas where these lead to pressure to dilute the combat content of the art, or anything else about me personally, it's not me you're aguing with, it's a whole slew of historians and investigators, some of them very senior Kwan era Korean Gms including Kim Pyung-soo and S. Henry Cho, as well as the current leadership of the new Taekkyon movement. Many of these people lived for extended periods in Korea and interviewed the 20th century taekkyon pioneers themselves. Many of them are not just literate in the relevant languages—Chinese, Korean and Japanese—but are trained in the examination of ancient documents and in the problems of translation, which are in many cases enormous. And many of them are very advanced practitioners of the KMAs as well.

I've assembled a good chunk of the documentation in the post I linked to above; it's there for anyone to read and refute, if you can do it. Robert Young and Stan Henning, for example, have assembled considerable evidence, now actually pretty much taken for granted amongst art historians and archæologists , that the physical data that the KKW textbook cites has nothing to do either with MAs or with Korea in particular; that the figures referred to are prototypical guardian figures of a sort found throughout China, Tibet, and even India. Moreover, as Lee Yong-bok—Son Duk Ki's senior student, and founder of the Taekkyon Research Association; in other words, not some late-coming American dude with nothing better to do than muddy the waters, eh?— has written in his own 1990 book, `the guardians originally held a spear in their hands, but when the images were transplanted [from China and India], artists did not replicate the weapons. The resulting clenched hands resemble closed fists, thus appearing as empty-hand martial arts poses.' [p.47] The Sanskrit names of these guardian deities figures are Vajradhara, and their iconography precedes the appearance of the Korean sculptures by millenia. And that's just a small sample of what turns up when careful, non-agenda-driven research based on a wide and deep knowledge of Asian material and literary culture is applied to these physical materials. Young's and Henning's work puts these supposed pieces of evidence of ancient KMAs under the microscope and leaves pretty much nothing left at the end. Nonetheless, the KKW goes on making the same claims, over and over again, repeatedly ignoring the fact that these supposed sculptural depictions of KMAs represent merely a late eastern manifestation of a pan-Asian guardian figure type which appears long before, and far away from, the earliest kingdoms of the Korean peninsula.

Now anyone can go to the library and get the same material I have. And you can form your own conclusions based on the logic of the case. I've repeatedly identified these materials, who's said what, what their evidence is, and so on. YoungMan, so far as I can tell, has read none of this stuff and pretty clearly has no intention of doing so; and for some reason still persists in confusing the late 20th/early 21st century material he's seen with the technical content that Song Duk-ki three quarters of a century ago taught to a small handful of students (including Gm. Kim Pyung-soo, who is one of the biggest debunkers of ancient KMAs or TKD linked to taekyon), in spite of the fact that the World Taekkyon Headquarters description of Taekkyon explicitly identifies the high complex techniques YM keeps alluding to as tournament practice, NOT the traditional TKD contest methods that Stuart Culin describes in detail in his 1895 ethnography of Korean games and folk sports. And which have little or nothing to do with the Taekkyon that is now a modest tournament sport in Korea, practiced by people who not only never learned from, but possibly never even heard of Song Duk-ki, as per Rob McLain's post here. But surely the rest of you, and other readers, should see the value of familiarizing yourselves with the hard-won results of all this research before deciding to buy the KKW fable hook, line and sinker? I mean, if you were going to get into a debate about the causes of WWI, or the fall of the Roman Empire, or the emergence of democracy in ancient Greece, you would familiarize yourself with the best, most carefully vetted and scrutinized research that had been produced up to that time, no? Even if time yielded further evidence on any of these historical phenomena, would you actually neglect any of what had been done to this point on the grounds that, well, new evidence might change the story, so...? I have a hard time believing that. So why is this particular bit of history any different? Yet repeatedly in these discussions of taekkyon, KMA history and so on, I see the same thing: don't bother us with this stuff, and besides, if you'd been doing TKD for as long as we have, you'd know better.

The point is—again—this isn't a matter of MA training or practice or knowledge of technique. It's matter of history, made difficult by gaps in documentation, by the effects of the Occupation and the War, and by the aggressive sponsorship of a particular version of events on the part of the current government of Korea, going back to the first post-Occupation regime. (Remember that, as Gen. Choi reported, it was Syngman Rhee himself—the military dictator, who so far as anyone knows had no knowledge of any Korean MA whatever—who insisted that the famous demo in which Nam Tae-hi, among other things, broke a stack of 13 roofing tiles, was a speciman of taekyon, and insisted it be publicized as such in spite of the fact that Gen. Choi himself and the other participants had identified it as tang soo do, one of the common names for the Kwan era art that the founders taught).

So my response to the issues raised by the KKW stuff cited in Terry's OP is, if you want to see what people who have devoted years of careful research to the subject have discovered, read what they have to say. If you disagree, or have counterevidence, present it. And try to understand that the content of their arguments, evidence and results has nothing to do with me personally. I'm just someone who happened to read what they had to say, assessed it based on my general understanding of how premise, data and conclusion should be related in rational reasoning, and found it far, far better in quality than the boilerplate propaganda that the WTF and KKW and their local branch plants have been putting out—and therefore thought it worthwhile to bring to the attention of people who may be interested in these questions. You don't like that conclusion? Fine: argue against it if you can, but please, leave me out of it, OK?

 

[arnisador]

but from MY EXPERIENCE (not generalizable to anyone else's) older Koreans were either lied to or lied about martial arts in Korea in the post-war era.

Yes, I think this is it--and a fervently held belief is all too easily mistaken for a correct belief.

People have lots of opinions on lots of things. We usually settle the matter publicly by accepting scholarly research by disinterested academics; of course, one can still believe what one wants to believe privately. But if you use prayer to treat your child's appendicitis you'll be on the wrong end of faith in a point of view vs. the acceptance of scientifically settled methods.

My mother sincerely believes that negative numbers hadn't been invented yet when she was in school in the 1950s. She's not trying to be facetitious. I've read technical appers from the 1700s that used them and scholarly works placing them back to at least circa 1300. Who knows who's right? I know that when I teach them in class I quote the historians, not my mother.

That's a good point. Unfortunately, many of the resources we might otherwise use to prove or disprove history are off limits to us because they are now in North Korea.

I have wondered about this before. The big picture is very well understood, but is there reason to suspect that there are interesting pieces of the puzzle hidden in (or destroyed by) North Korea that would significantly enlighten us?

 

[Dave Leverich]

Excellent post Exile.

 

[terryl965]

Look nobody here is trying to start a war of word, because I can not win. I am not smart enough to put down on paper what I need to say in person. So with this in mind I only have one question to all thee if everything is fabricated then why does so many of you and your Master and GM follow the Kukkiwon or the WTF? This puzzle me alot, the art is a fantastic art if tought right, but if you cannot believe one second of anything than why do it?

On a different note and perhaps a better question over the last 4 years here I have been told that I could not be MDK TKD because it never really exsisted, now four years later I am being told I am right.

All I know is this history is made up by people all the time to make it more than what it was but sometimes just sometimes maybe a tidbit here and a tidbit there can help open one mind to what the history was.

I am a Kukkiwon school does that mean I believe everything they say sure I do just like I believe everyhting our government says:rofl:. I follow the guidelines of the KKW because my GM did but I do my training based on what I have learned over the 45 years I have been involved in the Martial Arts. I believe we all walk down the same road and wants what is best for each of us, but the facts are this we train and train and tain our minds as much as our body, it will keep what is needed and discard the rest.

I hope one day before I die all the facts will come out about TKD and TSD and all the Korean arts so I could die in peace. LIKE THAT WILL EVER HAPPEN.

 

[tellner]

I. You Can Talk to a Grandmaster in DFW

Terry, first of all you have to kick that "Master" and "Grandmaster" habit of thought.

Seriously.

A Black Belt is a guy who knows how to punch and kick people in certain prescribed ways. That's it. Period. That is the entire meaning of the scrap of cloth and expensive piece of fake parchment. And all it really does is say that a bunch of other guys with fancier pieces of fake parchment think that he can.

It doesn't make him a priest, a doctor, a lawyer, an artist or a historian. It doesn't make him less fallible than you or me. In fact, it makes him more fallible and less trustworthy the higher he climbs the pole. The more of his life he invests in the organization and the more titles he accepts the more of his self image gets tied up with the style and its rituals, legends and framing stories.

The organization has its own agenda. Like most organizations a big part of it is promoting itself and convincing everyone that it is the coolest thing in the world, different than everything else and the most worthwhile thing a person could be involved in. It gets you to follow along, play its games and convince you that you could be ever so much cooler if you were part of it.

I'm not dumping on Tae Kwon Do here. This is how groups work and how they pat themselves on the back and make members feel special and reward dedication to the organization's goals. A Master or Grandmaster is simply someone who has risen high enough in the organization to bask in a larger share of reflected glory. Odds are he believes more of the framing stories and has internalized more of the groups goals than an outsider or regular members who have gotten past the starry eyed stage.

Do you want a chance at figuring out the truth? Not capital "T" Truth, just the little everyday who did what to whom for how many cookies sort of truth? You have to reject the argument from authority. That's the non-negotiable first step.

II. Did We Just Make It All Up?
For the love of Mike, guys, you aren't them. They aren't you. I'm sure they are wonderful guys, great coaches, top flight teachers and men who could kick my monkey *** without raising their heart rate. It just doesn't signify.

The guys you are personally loyal to didn't make up the stories. A bunch of guys who are mostly dead did that decades ago and thousands of miles away. I'm not attacking you for what they did. I am saying that their stories are not true. They made them up for the same reasons that people make up stories. They want to get people to think in a certain way, believe things, be loyal to some ideal or person, believe that Korean Martial Arts are the biggest, baddest, best and ballsiest in the the world and that it's an honor and privilege to be part of them.

So they wrote out the Japanese origins of Yudo and Gumdo and Tae Kwon Do.

They made up stories about the mythical Hwarang.

They took an old kicking and balance sport called Taekyon and said that since it's Korean and involves kicking it must be thousands of years old and be the basis for the purely Korean martial art that had just been invented. Even the Taekyon players don't believe that.

By your own admissions the story about TKD's origins has changed a number of times. But instead of saying "It's changed. It's a story. Stories change. Let's move on now and not pay the stories any extra mind," you say "The Grandmasters and the Masters who Unified the Kwans were doing something mysterious. It's a Mystery What Mere Disciples Wot Not Wot Of."

You've been given plenty of evidence that the stories are stories. Not true. Made up. Not based on facts. Let it go.

III. It's Not True. It Can't Be True. You Can't Prove It
YM, you keep putting proof in quotation marks. "I don't accept his 'proof'". So let me do what any thinking person would do and throw it back at you.

What are your standards? What would you accept as proof? Why do you believe what you believe? What do you know and how do you know it? Why should anyone accept what you believe?

You've got a story you want people to believe. That means that the burden of proof is on you. If you're an honest man you will hold yourself to a higher standard.

So far all you've done is say "My Grandmaster told me this" and "The Korean government says so". We've already established that your teacher is a great guy with a fantastic amount of skill at his martial art. It doesn't have anything to do with the matter at hand., And we know that the Korean government has told lots of stories to pump up feelings of nationalism. That's what governments do to make their citizens feel special and make the rest of the world take them seriously.

We're talking about evidence here. So far the evidence disproves the stories. It's been compiled by guys who have spent years studying history, Korean culture, martial arts and the appropriate languages. They've got evidence from many sources including primary documents, interviews, well-established history compiled by people who don't have a horse in the race and more.

So far you, Terry, TKD64 and the rest have marshaled nothing of the sort in defense of your position much less any sort of scholarly critique of the evidence that they have complied. It's all been "My Grandmaster and the Korean government tell me it's true, so it must be true."

The closest you'll get is "There might be evidence somewhere in North Korea that we can't get at that would prove my point."

I'm sorry, that doesn't wash. You have to go with the evidence that you have. When we get at those North Korean records they will probably say that Kim Il Sung invented Tae Kwon Do. They might say something else. Until then we have to go with what we have. What we have does not support your views.

 

[terryl965]

First off Tellner the GM is not mine so that is a wrong statement as far as his name it is GM Won Chik Park and GM Roy Kurban who by the way is an American who train with Park in Korea so they have been there and done that. I never ever say My Gm said this or that, exile knows this and so does the other, like I said in an earlier post all I am doing is putting out things that other people have wrote about and other orgs. No where did I say I believed anything so you are wrong again. What I said was I guess everybody is wrong but a few people draw your own coclusion here.

What does this subject when other sides are presented make so many people angry. I want a real Ameriacan TKD society that will keep up the original training of old style TKD or what I have learned from being over there training and here with a few people.

I hope this can keep going with intelligent converstation about what other folks say about history of the korean arts not that they are right or wrong but to bring more to the table so we can grow into a art of passion and SD principles.

Thankyou as always for your input into these matters.:asian:

 

[exile]

What does this subject when other sides are presented make so many people angry.

I agree, Terry, and as per my previous post, find this sort of thing very baffling. There's a question about history there that we're all interested in getting a solid, dependable answer to. There shouldn't be any basis for personal resentment, or anger, or a lot of the negative emotions that seem to surface over what should be a strictly academic issue. My best guess is that people in TKD are insecure about their art at some level and feel the need to connect it to something ancient, which plays into the ROK's interest in clothing its (economically and politically) extremely profitable Olympic cash cow in venerable robes... part of saleable mystique, I'd call it. But why TKDists are insecure about their art in a way that I don't see so much among , say, Shorin-ryu or Northern Mantis or Eskrima practitioners... that's a good question, and it's connected, I think, to something to do with the disrespect that TKD has gotten in terms of its combat utility. And we know where that disrespect came from—the lot of us have certainly talked enough about it! I think that that's what Tellner's point about people getting 'invested' in what should be a purely historical question reflects.

Which brings us to the next point, one that is totally connected the previous one, IMO:

I want a real Ameriacan TKD society that will keep up the original training of old style TKD or what I have learned from being over there training and here with a few people.

I again agree completely, and I'll say this: if we had such an organization and it worked the way both you and I would want it to work, I'd bet high that a decade or so down the line, very few people would be worrying about the historical antecedents or sources of TKD. Because we'd have a working SD system that we were confident in, and sure of, and that had a distinct identity from a Korean martial sport trying to keep its combat legitimacy even as its scoring system became further and further removed from the street. It would make an incredible difference in the nature of the conversations we have about TKD, I'm pretty sure of that!

 

[rmclain]

So with this in mind I only have one question to all thee if everything is fabricated then why does so many of you and your Master and GM follow the Kukkiwon or the WTF?

The Grandmaster I study under didn't follow WTF or Kukkiwon. In fact, he left Korea for the US in 1968 to escape the pressure to join with the modern TKD movement. Lots of people called him a "traitor" or "you're not a Korean" for not following the modern TKD movement. Many of the WTF and Kukkiwon people still don't like him.

As for Grandmaster Park Won-chik: He showed me alot of respect (I think because of my teacher-he's senior to Grandmaster Park), so I don't want to say anything negative about him. He was originally a Ji Do Kwan student, but doesn't teach anything from the old Jido-Kwan curriculum (I have his student manual at my dojang for reference) - just Olympic TKD requirements, etc. He probably doesn't know much about the history of the Jido-Kwan as well as the old instructors didn't really discuss this much, besides the name of Chang-sang Sup or Yoon Kwe-byung (Yoon Ui-byung). I know Grandmaster Park is part of an honorary Jido-Kwan organization - the key being "honorary."

Grandmaster Kurban studied with Grandmaster Park in Korea for about 1 year in the 1960's while on military duty. He probably trained again with Grandmaster Park when Grandmaster Park came to the US in the 1970's. But, I believe Grandmaster Kurban was already a champion on the tournament circuit by that time. Grandmaster Kurban is a truly nice guy if anyone gets to meet with him.

But, back to topic...

R. McLain

 

[terryl965]

The Grandmaster I study under didn't follow WTF or Kukkiwon. In fact, he left Korea for the US in 1968 to escape the pressure to join with the modern TKD movement. Lots of people called him a "traitor" or "you're not a Korean" for not following the modern TKD movement. Many of the WTF and Kukkiwon people still don't like him.

As for Grandmaster Park Won-chik: He showed me alot of respect (I think because of my teacher-he's senior to Grandmaster Park), so I don't want to say anything negative about him. He was originally a Ji Do Kwan student, but doesn't teach anything from the old Jido-Kwan curriculum (I have his student manual at my dojang for reference) - just Olympic TKD requirements, etc. He probably doesn't know much about the history of the Jido-Kwan as well as the old instructors didn't really discuss this much, besides the name of Chang-sang Sup or Yoon Kwe-byung (Yoon Ui-byung). I know Grandmaster Park is part of an honorary Jido-Kwan organization - the key being "honorary."

Grandmaster Kurban studied with Grandmaster Park in Korea for about 1 year in the 1960's while on military duty. He probably trained again with Grandmaster Park when Grandmaster Park came to the US in the 1970's. But, I believe Grandmaster Kurban was already a champion on the tournament circuit by that time. Grandmaster Kurban is a truly nice guy if anyone gets to meet with him.

But, back to topic...

R. McLain

Speaking of GrandMaster Kurban he is the one that sponsor GM Park to cone to the United States and they are long time friends. Thanks for the info. as always.

 

[SageGhost83]

I agree, Terry, and as per my previous post, find this sort of thing very baffling. There's a question about history there that we're all interested in getting a solid, dependable answer to. There shouldn't be any basis for personal resentment, or anger, or a lot of the negative emotions that seem to surface over what should be a strictly academic issue. My best guess is that people in TKD are insecure about their art at some level and feel the need to connect it to something ancient, which plays into the ROK's interest in clothing its (economically and politically) extremely profitable Olympic cash cow in venerable robes... part of saleable mystique, I'd call it. But why TKDists are insecure about their art in a way that I don't see so much among , say, Shorin-ryu or Northern Mantis or Eskrima practitioners... that's a good question, and it's connected, I think, to something to do with the disrespect that TKD has gotten in terms of its combat utility. And we know where that disrespect came from—the lot of us have certainly talked enough about it! I think that that's what Tellner's point about people getting 'invested' in what should be a purely historical question reflects.

I also think that a lot of the anger and insecurity comes from the same reason why TKD is always, ALWAYS, identified as "The Korean martial art" - nationalism, ethnocentrism, and dare I say it - racism. What other style goes so far out of its way to identify its nationality or ethnicity? Or what other style makes such a concentrated effort to deny its actual roots because they happen to be connected to another group of people? It seems that the actual art of Taekwondo gets lost in all of this and the focus shifts to nationalism and ethnocentrism. What is wrong with just admitting the art's actual roots and practicing it for the love the art? Why get so heavily invested in another nation's struggle that you are not a part of, and why aid in nationalist and ethnocentrist agendas? I for one am secure in my TKD and don't need to deny the facts or try to change what I practice just because it was influenced by the "wrong" nation and/or ethnicity.