The history of Korean Martial Arts?

geocad

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I should be working but this website has some really great reading entertainment. So, I am inspired to ask all those more knowledgeable than myself these questions.

1. How far back does Korean Martial Arts go (which dynasties)?
2. Which styles were developed from others? By whom? and when?

I am a very visual person so graphs and charts work best for me.
3. Is there a 'Family Tree' of Korean Martial Arts that answers my question above? If so, please post a link. If not but you know, please respond.

Years ago I studied HRD and was told that it's history goes back about 2K years. I was also told that many other KMAs (Tae Kwon Do, Hopkido, etc...) were developed from people who can be traced back (their instructors instructor and so on) to the 2000 year old Hwa Rang. I was once given an analogy that if Hwa Rang Do is the 'Great Grandfather' then Tae Kwon Do is like a great nephew to the Hwa Rang.

4. So, if the Hwa Rang can be traced back to the Silla 2000 years ago (and truely is the oldest), what is inbetween the then Hwa Rang and now Tae Kwon Do, Hopkido, etc...?

I'm not disputing what my former instructors and master taught me. That would be disrespectful. I'm just curious to know what others know of Korean Martial Arts history.

Thanks for the history lesson I'm about to receive!
 

Dave Leverich

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One, two, three, not it!

It's a long path to enlightenment on this subject, I'm still very much walking down it and finding what I can.
 

Ninjamom

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How much do you want to know, and to what depth? Prepare for a bewildering array of legend, myth, and acrimonious debate!

I would say that no Korean martial art, as practiced today, can trace a continous lineage back 2000 years. The closest would probably be Ssireum (a form of belt wrestling derived from Mongol influence and dating probably to the Koryo dynasty (700 AD or so?), and Korean archery (archery for warfare and sport was much more extensively documented on the Korean peninsula than any other style I could find). Added to this, there are elements of Takyeon that predate the Japanese occupation and are still widely practiced, and there are elements of several more obscure arts that predate the Japanese occupation, that are narrowly practiced today. Most other arts involve a complex fusion of some elements of these arts, with a heavy helping of Japanese influences, and/or elements reconstructed in modern times from older written sources.

I would say that the modern Hwa Rang Do is completely made in modern times, largely from Shotokan Karate, as is most of Tae Kwon Do (although TKD does include elements from the much older Takyeon).

Empty-handed and weapons arts are documented in Korea throughout all the dynasties; however, the Korean system of writing wasn't invented until the 14th century or so, so it is hard to find Korean written sources from periods earlier than this. The written sources that are available document the practice of sword arts, pole arm arts, horseback arts, and empty-handed arts, and the extensive use of flails, spears, bows, and arrows. What is unclear is how or how much of these arts relate to modern forms and practices.
 

exile

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How much do you want to know, and to what depth? Prepare for a bewildering array of legend, myth, and acrimonious debate!

I would say that no Korean martial art, as practiced today, can trace a continous lineage back 2000 years. The closest would probably be Ssireum (a form of belt wrestling derived from Mongol influence and dating probably to the Koryo dynasty (700 AD or so?), and Korean archery (archery for warfare and sport was much more extensively documented on the Korean peninsula than any other style I could find). Added to this, there are elements of Takyeon that predate the Japanese occupation and are still widely practiced, and there are elements of several more obscure arts that predate the Japanese occupation, that are narrowly practiced today. Most other arts involve a complex fusion of some elements of these arts, with a heavy helping of Japanese influences, and/or elements reconstructed in modern times from older written sources.

I would say that the modern Hwa Rang Do is completely made in modern times, largely from Shotokan Karate, as is most of Tae Kwon Do (although TKD does include elements from the much older Takyeon).

Empty-handed and weapons arts are documented in Korea throughout all the dynasties; however, the Korean system of writing wasn't invented until the 14th century or so, so it is hard to find Korean written sources from periods earlier than this. The written sources that are available document the practice of sword arts, pole arm arts, horseback arts, and empty-handed arts, and the extensive use of flails, spears, bows, and arrows. What is unclear is how or how much of these arts relate to modern forms and practices.

Beautiful succint summary of the best knowledge we have on the subject, Ninjamom! More rep for you as soon as you cycle off my rep stack...

I've assembled some of the most important results that KMA historians have worked out on the basis of the whole set of evidence available—archaeological, textual and etymological, in the following posts:

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46554&page=2&highlight=Burdick

See posts #18, 20, 21, 22. The bottom line is very much as Ninjamom has summarized it. There is literally no evidence for `ancient' versions of modern KMAs, whether we're talking TKD, TSD, Hapkido, or something else. There is no evidence whatsoever for a relationship between whatever it is that the ancient Hwarang practiced in battle, on the one hand, and modern Hwarangdo on the other (any more than there evidence for a relationship between modern Shaolin Kempo Karate, on the one hand, and what it was the monks of the Shaolin temple were doing in the era of the (quite possibly entirely legendary) Bhodhidharma). If I design a modern tank firing heat-seeking missiles and sporting a Vulcan gatling-style cannon, and call it the Hoplite tank, you are not thereby entitled to identify that tank with the armament carried by the 300 Spartans and their Thespian allies at the battle of Thermopylae, eh? :wink1:

Similarly, as documented in the posts I've mentioned:

(i) there is no connection between 19th c. taekkyon and the takkyon alluded to in certain relatively early documentation of Korean fighting arts;
(ii) there is no reliable evidence that taekkyon played any kind of significant role in the formation of the kwan-era arts that provided the entire technical basis of modern TKD and TSD;
(iii) there is no evidence at all of any effort on the part of either the Korean government or of TKD/TSD textbook authors to scrutinize the historical record to ascertain the actual, historically document development of these arts; legendary 2000 year old lineages sell ever so much better, eh?

I recently had a useful encounter with the difference between legendary and real history myself. After passing on the standard folklore about Mas Oyama's practice of stunning, and in a few cases killing, fierce fighting bulls in unarmed combat, I was prompted by my ever-skeptical MT friend Brian van Cise to reexamine the record and see if there were any truth to this story. It turns out that there is an extensive interview with one of Oyama's most senior students and inheritors of his kyokushin karate mantle, Jon Bluming, who stated flatly that Oyama had `fought' a bull only once, that the `bull' was actually an ox, obviously frightened—JB emphasized that oxen are treated kindly, as pets, in the Japanese countryside, and are not used to being mistreated—that Oyama did not kill the ox but did hurt it, that he, Bluming, thought this was abominable, and that Oyama himself felt bad about the publicity stunt (which he admitted it was) and never did it again—and yet, newspaper and web biographies have him injuring a couple of dozen or more angry bulls and killing three outright. So much fake media hype, and this is within living memory—and then we're expected to accept vague rumor about events going back hundreds or even thousands of years in the Three Kingdoms era???

I have to say, I actually find hateful this willingness to abandon rational standards of evidence in favor of legend, cynically manipulated by major KMA organizations like the WTF (see Burdick's 2000 version of his paper `People and events of Taekwondo's formative years' at http://www.budosportcapelle.nl/gesch.html for documentation of my claim here).
Keep an open mind and look hard at the kind of myth-mongering you're going to find in this area, where fantasy history serves the needs of both nationalist politics and global sports marketing.
 

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I just read through that old thread that detailed all your research in the history of Korean MA's. Wow! How did I miss that the first time around??!?! Thank you for posting and linking back to that discussion.

Just to add a little more fuel to the fire, I would like to point out a few things:

1. Some would argue against the 'Koreanness' of TKD/TSD because of it's recent roots in Japanese arts. Keep in mind, however, that karate (originally 'the art of the Chinese hand', not 'empty hand') was only brought into Japan by Funikosha from Okinawa (a very Chinese culture) in 1925. The pre-Tae Kwon Do kwans were founded in Korea by Korean practitioners of karate around 1945. If 'karate' could become 'Japanese' in the 20 years between its introduction into Japan and the founding of pre-TKD kwans in Korea, then certainly TKD/TSD would be 'Korean' after the 50+ years since TKD's official founding in 1955.

2. As to the Chinese roots of all-arts-Korean, this is a somewhat simplified version of a much more complicated situation. Saying there was a body of Chinese arts from which Korean arts derived is sort of like saying there was a culture shared by the native Americans before the Europeans arrived. There were actually lots of cultures, independent of each other, and certainly no monolithic 'native American culture', any more than there was a monolithic Chinese culture during the time of the early Koguryo empire. Koguryo (and the Chinese/Korean area of Ballhae afterwards) expanded to the largest extent of any of the early Korean empires. The 'Chinese' culture at the time was divided into various regions, so much so that, in the Han area in the north especially, influences from Koguryo to the Han were probably as great as influences from the Han to the Koguryo. (See post on other thread regarding similarities between Han and Koguryo cultures for why this is important in the present discussion).

3. Korean culture is deeply influenced by Confucianism, and especially 14 C. neo-Confucianism. Such a Confucian world-view seems to add to the 'filial respect' and deference Korean culture shows to China in areas political, cultural, and literary. Chinese language, culture, writing, and martial skills would naturally play a big role in a smaller nation that viewed China as an older brother/father.

4. The Muye Dobo Tongji (Comprehensive Manual of Military Arts) does in fact derive mostly from Chinese records - this was to be expected when the Chinese sent the envoy who wrote it (a Chinese scholar of Korean extraction) to detail the martial skills for the training of the Korean military to help build a bulwark against 'Japanese hegemony'. It is acknowledged by the author to be a compilation of several previous texts, some of which are still extant, but most of which are not. However, the book provides extensive notes, references, and additions regarding Korean history, succession of kings, and native history of martial practices (including archery and wrestling matches, kingdom-wide competitions, libraries set up by various kings for martial studies, etc.) An English translation that includes a good set of explanations identifying which parts are additions from prior sources and which sections were copied nearly verbatim, is available through Turtle Press. The book clearly shows the imported Chinese arts, and identifies/adds (compared to prior Chinese and Korean sources) Japanese sword techniques (called 'wae gum' or 'foreign sword') and something the authors called 'native' (presumably Korean) sword techniques.

5. The oldest written record I have found detailing a body of martial sword skills in Korea (important to me because I practice 'Korean' sword arts) shows some skills/weaponry used by the citizens/army in defense of the king, and separate skills/weaponry used by Buddhist monks in the rural monasteries (no, I am not kidding, really. Monks. Mountains. Monasteries). I know, that has gotten to be a cliche' in bogus Korean MA histories. However, a group of Dutch sailors were shipwrecked in Korea in the 1600's. They were forbidden to leave, and taken into Korean culture (including mandatory military service for the King), before several escaped. One of them, Hendrick Hamel, kept a journal and eventually published his records of what they experienced and saw. An English-language version is available on the Website of Henny Savenije, providing a very interesting insight into 17th Century Korea.

Here is the homepage for the English translation of the journal:
http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/index.htm

The navigation bar on the lefthand side of the webpage includes links to some very good background information on the times, the journey, and the men involved. The journal itself starts on the page marked "Journal".

I found this excerpt from the journal, describing the military system very interesting:
(from webpage http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/holland10.htm )

Hamels' journal Translated by Henny Savenije said:
The army
For the defense of the country there are several thousands of soldiers in the capital, both cavalry and infantry. They are maintained by the king. Their duty is to guard the king and protect him if he goes out. Each province is obliged to send all its free men, once every seven years to the capital, to guard the palace of the king during two months; every two months another group and each year another province.

Each province has a general who has three to four colonels below him. Below each colonel are a number of captains, who are commanders of a city or a stronghold. Each ward has a sergeant, each village a corporal and at the head of each group of ten men is a soldier first class. All officers and noncommissioned officers have to keep records with the names of all the men who falls under his command. These records have to be handed over to their superiors once a year. In this way, the king always knows how many soldiers he has at his disposal.

The horsemen always wear a suit of armor and a helmet. They carry a sword, a bow and arrows and a kind of flail with sharp points. Of the infantry, some wear suits of armor and helmets, made of iron plates, and also from bone. They are armed with muskets, sables and short lances. The officers are armed with bow and arrow. Each soldier has to have gunpowder and bullets for 50 shots at his own expense. When we served in Seoul , we received on a certain day 10 blows on our bare buttocks, because we didn't have enough gunpowder on us.

Each city has to appoint a number of monks from the monasteries in its surroundings who have to maintain the fortresses and strongholds in the mountains. In times of great need these monks are being used as soldiers. They are armed with sword, bow and arrow. They are considered to be the best soldiers of the country. They are under the command of a captain they have chosen from their own ranks.

Who has reached the age of 60 is dismissed from military service. His place is being taken by his children. The free men who haven't been in the army, form, together with the slaves, half of the population. If a free man fathers a child from a slave or a slave from a free woman, is the child which is conceived in this way, a slave. If a male slave who begets children by a female slave, those children become the property of the owner of the female slave.

Each city has to maintain a war junk, with the crew, the armament and further accessories. These junks have two decks and 20 to 24 oars. On each oar there are six rowers. The total crew consists of about 300 heads, soldiers and rowers. The junks have some pieces of artillery and provisions for shooting Byzantine fire.

(Bold text added for emphasis; paragraphs added to make it easier to read.)

Note the bold section: the monasteries kept a separate military organization, with a separate command structure, and distinct weapons compliment. They were recognized as some of the best soldiers in the country, and defended the monasteries in rural areas. This isn't much to build any case for a specific Korean martial 'style'. Coupled with the additions in the MDTJ, however, it does suggest that the techniques used in the monasteries could have been the 'native' techniques the MDTJ authors described, so a limited case can be made for at least one set of forms recorded in the MDTJ being of purely Korean origin. Korean sword practitioners of Deahan Kumdo (Korean version of kendo) learn a reconstructed version of this form, and practice it as the part of their style 'unique' from the Japanese root that underlies all other aspects of their art.

This is the oldest written record I have found of distinct sword arts/styles in Korea....I wish it gave more detail. Still, the article and descriptions of life in Old Korea are very interesting, and well worth the read for anyone interested in Korean culture/history beyond its martial aspects.
 

exile

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I just read through that old thread that detailed all your research in the history of Korean MA's. Wow! How did I miss that the first time around??!?! Thank you for posting and linking back to that discussion.

Just to add a little more fuel to the fire, I would like to point out a few things:

1. Some would argue against the 'Koreanness' of TKD/TSD because of it's recent roots in Japanese arts. Keep in mind, however, that karate (originally 'the art of the Chinese hand', not 'empty hand') was only brought into Japan by Funikosha from Okinawa (a very Chinese culture) in 1925. The pre-Tae Kwon Do kwans were founded in Korea by Korean practitioners of karate around 1945. If 'karate' coud become 'Japanese' in the 20 years between its introduction into Japan and the founding of pre-TKD kwans in Korea, then certainly TKD/TSD would be 'Korean' after the 50+ years since TKD's official founding in 1955.

2. As to the Chinese roots of all-arts-Korean, this is a somewhat simplified version of a much more complicated situation. Saying there was a body of Chinese arts from which Korean arts derived is sort of like saying there was a culture shared by the native Americans before the Europeans arrived. There were actually lots of cultures, independent of each other, and certainly no monolithic 'native American culture', any more than there was a monolithic Chinese culture during the time of the early Koguryo empire. Koguryo (and the Chinese/Korean area of Ballhae afterwards) expanded to the largest extent of any of the early Korean empires. The 'Chinese' culture at the time was divided into various regions, so much so that, in the Han area in the north especially, influences from Koguryo to the Han were probably as great as influences from the Han to the Koguryo. (See post on other thread regarding similarities between Han and Koguryo cultures for why this is important in the present discussion).

3. Korean culture is deeply influenced by Confucianism, and especially 14 C. neo-Confucianism. Such a Confucian world-view seems to add to the 'filial respect' and deference Korean culture shows to China in areas political, cultural, and literary. Chinese language, culture, writing, and martial skills would naturally play a big role in a smaller nation that viewed China as an older brother/father.

4. The Muye Dobo Tongji (Comprehensive Manual of Military Arts) does in fact derive mostly from Chinese records - this was to be expected when the Chinese sent the envoy who wrote it (a Chinese scholar of Korean extraction) to detail the martial skills for the training of the Korean military to help build a bulwark against 'Japanese hegemony'. It is acknowledged by the author to be a compilation of several previous texts, some of which are still extant, but most of which are not. However, the book provides extensive notes, references, and additions regarding Korean history, succession of kings, and native history of martial practices (including archery and wrestling matches, kingdom-wide competitions, libraries set up by various kings for martial studies, etc.) An English translation that includes a good set of explanations identifying which parts are additions from prior sources and which sections were copied nearly verbatim, is available through Turtle Press. The book clearly shows the imported Chinese arts, and identifies/adds (compared to prior Chinese and Korean sources) Japanese sword techniques (called 'wae gum' or 'foreign sword') and something the authors called 'native' (presumably Korean) sword techniques.

5. The oldest written record I have found detailing a body of martial sword skills in Korea (important to me because I practice 'Korean' sword arts) shows some skills/weaponry used by the citizens/army in defense of the king, and separate skills/weaponry used by Buddhist monks in the rural monasteries (no, I am not kidding, really. Monks. Mountains. Monasteries). I know, that has gotten to be a cliche' in bogus Korean MA histories. However, a group of Dutch sailors were shipwrecked in Korea in the 1600's. They were forbidden to leave, and taken into Korean culture (including mandatory military service for the King), before several escaped. One of them, Hendrick Hamel, kept a journal and eventually published his records of what they experienced and saw. An English-language version is available on the Web, providing a very interesting insight into 17th Century Korea.

Here is the homepage for the English translation of the journal:
http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/index.htm

The navigation bar on the lefthand side of the webpage includes links to some very good background information on the times, the journey, and the men involved. The journal itself starts on the page marked "Journal".

I found this excerpt from the journal, describing the military system very interesting:
(from webpage http://www.hendrick-hamel.henny-savenije.pe.kr/holland10.htm )



(Bold text added for emphasis; paragraphs added to make it easier to read.)

Note the bold section: the monasteries kept a separate military organization, with a separate command structure, and distinct weapons compliment. They were recognized as some of the best soldiers in the country, and defended the monasteries in rural areas. This isn't much to build any case for a specific Korean martial 'style'. Coupled with the additions in the MDTJ, however, it does suggest that the techniques used in the monasteries could have been the 'native' techniques the MDTJ authors described, so a limited case can be made for at least one set of forms recorded in the MDTJ being of purely Korean origin. Korean sword practitioners of Deahan Kumdo (Korean version of kendo) learn a reconstructed version of this form, and practice it as the part of their style 'unique' from the Japanese root that underlies all other aspects of their art.

This is the oldest written record I have found of distinct sword arts/styles in Korea....I wish it gave more detail. Still, the article and descriptions of life in Old Korea are very interesting, and well worth the read for anyone interested in Korean culture/history beyond its martial aspects.

Ninjamom, that's brilliant—it adds an important dimension to the documentation available for KMAs. That's the sort of thing that you hope for: real contemporary records written by someone who doesn't have a particular agenda to push but is simply recording what s/he actually sees (rather than passing on second-hand information from a source that may itself be second-hand, ad infinitem). Great stuff! And thanks very much for the link to the journal page...
 

exile

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And just as a PS to the previous post: yes, NnJM, you're absolutely correct about the Korean-ness of the Korean MAs, vis-à-vis the Japaneseness of the karate that originally came from Okinawa (after itself evolving there from a complex set of Japanese samurai bushido arts, Chinese chuan-fa systems, native tuite/todi skill-sets, and the creative genius of Bushi Matsumura). No one need fabricate a fantastical mystery lineage to establish their cultural foundations in Korea. The facts themselves are clear enough on that point, just as you say.
 

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And just as a PS to the previous post: yes, NnJM, you're absolutely correct about the Korean-ness of the Korean MAs, vis-à-vis the Japaneseness of the karate that originally came from Okinawa (after itself evolving there from a complex set of Japanese samurai bushido arts, Chinese chuan-fa systems, native tuite/todi skill-sets, and the creative genius of Bushi Matsumura). No one need fabricate a fantastical mystery lineage to establish their cultural foundations in Korea. The facts themselves are clear enough on that point, just as you say.

This is a great point. Korean martial arts founded in Korea are now and have been turned into Korean systems. TKD/TSD is definately not the same as Shotokan Karate. (there are some serious differances) Hapkido is certainly not like Aikido nor do they both resemble Daito Ryu Aikijujutsu to a tee. I could go on but if you are practicing a Korean martial art then have faith that it is representative of the Korean people's spirit. It may have come from another country but it has been changed and adapted to fit with the Korean people.
 

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(i) there is no connection between 19th c. taekkyon and the takkyon alluded to in certain relatively early documentation of Korean fighting arts;
I get around that finer nuance merely by being an incredibly poor speller, and managing to spell both names incorrectly :eek:

Good call!

(ii) there is no reliable evidence that taekkyon played any kind of significant role in the formation of the kwan-era arts that provided the entire technical basis of modern TKD and TSD;
Drat! Now I have homework! I was always under the impression that at least one of the major Kwan founders had studied Taekyon extensively.
 

exile

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I get around that finer nuance merely by being an incredibly poor speller, and managing to spell both names incorrectly :eek:

Good call!

Drat! Now I have homework! I was always under the impression that at least one of the major Kwan founders had studied Taekyon extensively.

This was something that Gen. Choi started alluding to in the late 1960s, apparently. But if you take a look at that interview by Robert McLain with his own Gm. Kim Pyung Soo, you get a very different view of the story! (check it out at http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43720). In particular, note the part where Gm. Kim points out that

At first, I went to the bookstore to find information about Tae kyun. There was no Tae kyun remaining or being taught in those days after the Japanese occupation. Just my neighbor Song Duk-ki had any experience with it. I found an old book that had a poem by a Yi Dynasty poet named Mei Hwah Sun. He wrote about a friendly competition called “Tae kyun” held during the Dan Oh Festival during the month of May. That was the first thing I found at the bookstore.

The Japanese occupation actually began in the last decade of the 19th c., so taekkyon seems to have been effectively dead by the time Gen. Choi would have been in a position to learn it—though there's a good deal of question as to what there was to actually learn; as Steve Capener observes in a very important, very thoroughly documented paper, `Problems in the identity and philosophy of T'aegwondo and their historical causes' (available at http://winstonstableford.com/identity.html),

The first reference to t'aekkyon comes from a book called the Chaemulbo written by Yi Song-gi during the reign of King Chongjo (1776-1800) where it is referred to as t'aekkyon. In the mid 1800s, an artist of the royal court named Yu Suk (1827-1873) painted a mural called the Taek'oedo in which t'aekkyon and ssirum are being contested as folk games in the midst of much smoking and drinking.

In 1921, at the age of 70, Ch'oe Yong-nyon described t'aekkyon in his book, Haedong chukchi, as a game in which two partners squared off and tried to knock each other down with their feet. He went on to say, "This became a means of exacting revenge for a slight or winning away an opponent's concubine through betting. Due to this, the game was outlawed by the judiciary and eventually disappeared.


By the time Gen. Choi appeared on the scene, there thus seems to have been almost nothing left of what, in itself, doesn't appear to have been an actual martial art so much as a kind of foot-wrestling/kicking game of a kind described elsewhere in northern Asia and amongst the Inuit across N. America and Siberia. There really is no good evidence for either Gen. Choi or Hwang Kee, the other Kwan founder usually identified with early training in taekkyon, having actually `done' taekkyon—as Capener and others have suggested, it apparently wasn't so much a martial art as a kicking game; HK's verifiable training seems to have been in a Japanese adaptation of Okinawan Goju-ryu under Gogen Yamaguchi, a Japanese intelligence operative, when both of them were posted to Manchuria in the late 1930s, as Burdick (2000) documents in the paper at http://www.budosportcapelle.nl/gesch.html

Gen. Choi is known to have changed his story about TKD's origins opportunistically; you saw those citations I gave about his twistings and turning in the Combat interviews over three decades, and note what Gm. Kim in the Maclain interview says:


RM: General Choi Hong-hi created Tae Kwon Do?

GMKS: In the early days he was teaching the same karate forms as the other kwans, such as Pyung Ahn, Bassai Tae, Kon Sang Kun, etc. Then in the late 1950’s he came up with a story about martial arts links to Korguryo dynasty, Silla Dynasty, 2000 years of tradition, etc.


On the whole, then, as I read the record, there's no documentary evidence for any role of taekkyon in either the personal training of any of the Kwan founders nor in the formation of Taekwondo/Tandsoodo themselves...
 

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I'm in awe.
Honestly, this kind of thread, with these kinds of discourse... it's the entire reason I went looking for martial forums.

Thank you all, you've given much!
 

JWLuiza

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Ack!

You guys.... Shhhhhhhhhhh! You might scare off the spoon-fed masses eating their Korean Legends and not questioning the source of their material.

And Brian VanCliese put it into beautiful perspective: It didn't start as korean, but sure is now!


Kudos to NinjaMom and the rest of you.

-John
 

shesulsa

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I'm in awe.
Honestly, this kind of thread, with these kinds of discourse... it's the entire reason I went looking for martial forums.

Thank you all, you've given much!
I gotta say, I'm *really* pleased that this discussion has been SO FRUITFUL AND SO FRIENDLY!!

Kudos to all you folks!
 
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Wow! Pretty cool stuff here. Thanks for the very informative info! So then, who out there in the MT world has Adobe Illustrator? Maybe someone would be so kind to put together the KMA family tree starting with the present day (at the bottom of the tree - many branches, each containing a current KMA style) and working backwards (up to the top of the page).

I can visualize branches of the tree moving back into Japan and China. I guess the question now is...

Who is your master's master, and so on, and when did they get their master status? How far back can this be traced? Maybe this should be a new thread.

I guess the answer to Hwa Rang Do ends with Saum Dosa. I read it somewhere (SheSulsa's response somewhere containing links) that there is no written or verbal answer to who was Saum Dosa's master.

Maybe WHRDA MAs can answer this question?

Again, I'm just curious (Curious George monkeying around on the computer) and do not want to sound disrespectful to anyone, especially my old former bros & sisters from HRD.

Thanks again!!

Farang
 

bluemtn

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Tons of good and interesting info! I agree with Brian and others that said, "It may not have started as a Korean art, but it is Korean now." Sure, there might be roots in other arts like Shotokan, but things change. People see forms/ how things are done, and that's how things change- maybe not drastically and all at once, but it happens.
 

exile

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Korean martial arts founded in Korea are now and have been turned into Korean systems. TKD/TSD is definately not the same as Shotokan Karate. (there are some serious differances) Hapkido is certainly not like Aikido nor do they both resemble Daito Ryu Aikijujutsu to a tee. I could go on but if you are practicing a Korean martial art then have faith that it is representative of the Korean people's spirit. It may have come from another country but it has been changed and adapted to fit with the Korean people.

This process of constant adaptation and local development is one of the reasons for the sheer complexity of MA history and one of the reasons why it seems to me particularly unfortunate that many MAists seem to feel that to validate their particular art, they must show some kind of `pure lineage'. The fact is, everyone is always getting ideas from everyone else and, equally, everyone is making stylistic as well as structural adaptations that give the art its stand-alone integrity. There's no loss of credibility in the least, if we acknowledge that these supposedly `pure' arts are in fact hybrids—there's a reason why biologists use the term `hybrid vigor', typically defined, as at http://www.everythingbio.com/glos/definition.php?word=hybrid+vigor, as `increased vitality (compared to that of either parent stock) in the hybrid offspring of two different, inbred parents.' The extremely hybrid nature of `traditional karate' is just one example'; I'd be willing to bet that the same phenomenon could be exhibited in China, in Indonesia and the rest of Oceania, and in the rest of the martial art world.

I think history itself is a two-edged sword. One of the edges is understanding of technical content: e.g., knowing how elements of the Pinan kata passes from Okinawa to Japan, and then from Japan to TSD in Korea, and finally (in chopped-up and mixmastered form) to components of hyungs such as the Palgwes in TKKD, can give you very important technical clues as to the proper application of the movement in the Pinans that encode effective self-defense applications. But there's another edge you can cut yourself on, the one where people try to use the history of their art to protect yourself from the insecurity that so many MAists seem to feel about what they've learned. I suspect that that need for lineage purity, for the claim of uniqueness of the art, that it's not derived from other, possibly `foreign' sources, based in that insecurity, leads people who are dissatified with what authentic documented history tells them to the kind of fantasy histories that we keep seeing in various places, in spite of repeated debunking, and which they now accept virtually as articles of faith. This gets in a way to Shesulsa's comment:

I gotta say, I'm *really* pleased that this discussion has been SO FRUITFUL AND SO FRIENDLY!!

I think discussions of this sort can be friendly and constructive (even where there's some level of disagreement) if people approach conversation as their chance to tell others what they believe and why. You might find someone else's arguments and basis for thinking what they do more convicing than your own, or less, but in the end, there's nothing personal at stake. You're just explaining what motivates your perspective. Many times, as a result of such give-and-take, I've rethought various conclusions I'd come to; it's not a big deal! As long as people are willing to listen to the evidence that others present and take it in, at least, that's the most you can hope for. If they dispute it, or show that it's not sound or is based on mistaken conclusions... well, it's not tragic! As long as they can make a rational case for their challenge to it, there's nothing to complain about.

But sometimes it seems as though there is another agenda that drives some of the discussion, the second edge of the sword I mentioned...when that sort of thing comes into play is when a lot of good discussions are prone to go sideways....
 

howard

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I would say that the modern Hwa Rang Do is completely made in modern times, largely from Shotokan Karate...
Sorry, but no... Hwarangdo comes mostly from Hapkido, with additional elements from Chinese arts. Lee Joo Bang was a student of Choi Yong Sool at some point. He called what he taught "Hapkido" when he first came to the US. He invented the Hwarangdo history somewhere along the line. You should take it with a sackful of salt.

Hwarangdo bears little resemblance to Shotokan.
 

Dave Leverich

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Isn't there two unique systems, both going by Hwarang Do? I could be wrong, but I thought I'd seen something on that. The US one, and a Korean one (the former being the one you mention which I was famliar with as such too).
 

shesulsa

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Sorry, but no... Hwarangdo comes mostly from Hapkido, with additional elements from Chinese arts. Lee Joo Bang was a student of Choi Yong Sool at some point. He called what he taught "Hapkido" when he first came to the US. He invented the Hwarangdo history somewhere along the line. You should take it with a sackful of salt.
I do believe I've posted www.hwarang.org before - folks might be seriously interested in this page. There are many accounts of Do Joo Nim training with people who later (after having been visited by him) stated he never did. It does make one wonder ....

Hwarangdo bears little resemblance to Shotokan.
Interesting you say that, because we had a 1st Dan Shotokan bb in our class who I remember saying at least once (maybe twice) that they are remarkably similar, though Shotokan is mainly a hard style where HRD is a dialectic style.
 

JWLuiza

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I just received a copy of Master Glenn Jones Korean Martial Arts handbook: A Guide to History, Arts, Schools, Styles, Forms and Terminology Past and Present.

You want the dirt? The who was teaching at the YMCA in 1963 and creating what kwan? It is here. I am just finishing a reading and found more than I would ever need to know about the history of most of the major and minor kwans of Tang Soo Do and Hap Ki Do. Kuk Sool Wan, KiDo, and other korean based arts are there as well.

There is also some information on the origination of forms in korean martial arts, tying them to the korean founder, or the okinawan verisons and who was likely to have brought the form over.

Good stuff for us history dorks. Let me know if you are interested in obtaining a copy.
 

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