The raise and fall of TKD

[terryl965]

This thread is for the sole purpose of exploring the raise of TKD way back when and what made it grow so fast.


And on the other side of the coin the fall of TKD asi it is practice today.

Lets try to stay withen thse peramiter and be mature about it.


To me General Choi had alot of influence over everybody in Korea was this really true or was there somebody else behind the curtain pulling the strings? What made them join forces, I mean the early Kwons what was the bottom line to the nowadays kukkiwon, what did the Head of each kwon really get out og uniting?

Let start with this and work our way though history.

 

[FearlessFreep]

I'm interested in what others may say here. I am a relative newcomer to Taekwondo and Martial Arts in general. I read a booklet from a friend from the late 60s,early 70s about Taekwondo and the tenor of the book was definitely that it was a combat art, not a sport. But I'm too new to really see inside the history, organizations, and politics so I really don't see where it's come or where it is today, very clearly at least. However, I'm very interested n where it is today and where it is going...

 

[exile]

Terry, there's a lot to say about this; I can't do it now, because of all kinds of holiday prep and unwelcome chaos in our lives, but I'm planning to get back to it asap. Just wanted to let you know that I'm not blowing your thread off!

More later (probably more than you or anyone else wants to hear!); meanwhile, a good place to start is with the January issue of Black Belt and the interview with Gm. Kim Soo there, about the history of TKD...

 

[terryl965]

Terry, there's a lot to say about this; I can't do it now, because of all kinds of holiday prep and unwelcome chaos in our lives, but I'm planning to get back to it asap. Just wanted to let you know that I'm not blowing your thread off!

More later (probably more than you or anyone else wants to hear!); meanwhile, a good place to start is with the January issue of Black Belt and the interview with Gm. Kim Soo there, about the history of TKD...

I will be waiting with anticipation.

 

[Tames D]

This is a great thread topic. My TKD history knowlegde is lacking but I will be very interested in hearing responses from others.

 

[no_kata]

Do you guys think it has anything to do with the McDojos that sprang up virtually overnight that watered down the art?

 

[FearlessFreep]

Do you guys think it has anything to do with the McDojos that sprang up virtually overnight that watered down the art?

I think* rather it is related to the increase in popularity in general. i think the 'powers that be' in Taekwondo made a calculated decision to increase the popularity of Taekwondo, especially through the Olympics. So it massively increased the popularity of Taekwondo, which lead to an increase in demand for accessibility for Taekwondo, which led to an increase in the number of Taekwondo schools/instructors, at a cost of needing to "give the customer what they want", which was tournament training for the kids, not combat training for the adults. Calculated, intentional.... good or not depends on your prespective

*Disclaimer - I have no real idea..just speculating

 

[exile]

My take on the history of TKD, and General Choi's role in it, is this: he was absolutely crucial to the development of TKD in its first phase in Korea, not as an individual personality, but rather as an embodiment of the military (therefore state-centralized) dynamics which led to the condition of TKD in Korea and, by extension, the West. The Korean War was a nasty, brutal war for the American and other foreign forces who fought in it, but it was a horrific catastrophe for the Koreans themselves, threatening their physical survival just at the point when they should have been rebuilding their society and economy in the aftermath of the Japanese defeat, the way the European countries were able to do—in no small part because of a Marshall Plan the Koreans had no part in—after the destruction of Nazi Germany. The role of General Choi Hong Hi is pivotal in relating the apocalyptic crisis of the Korean War to the subsequent career of the Korean martial arts and the formation of the institutional arrangements conveniently labelled 'Taekwondo'. Gen. Choi, trained in Shotkan karate as a second dan belt under Gichin Funakoshi, had attained the status of colonel in the Korean army before the outbreak of the Korean War and had already begun the training of Korean soldiers in karate (=kong soo do in Korean transliteration). During the course of the war, as Simon O'Neil mentions in passing in his Combat TKD newsletter 9, `several military units trained in the art, including elite special operations groups, fought with great distinction'. The Black Tiger commandos were particularly celebrated in the South—and feared in the North—for their ferocity in combat using the H2H training they had received as special tactical units responsible to Choi, and their success—along with that of the RoK Marines at the battle of Tra Binh Dong (for discussion, documentation/citations, see here)—in turn gave Choi a prestige that led to his promotion to the rank of General.

In the aftermath of the war, with Korean society in a state of chaos, poverty and despair that probably very few North Americans can visualize, the performance of the military in preserving the ROK from the intensity of the North Korean attack, backed with Russian and Chinese support, gave the army a special cachet and status which fed directly into Gen. Choi's ability to determine the priority of MA training for the armed forces, and, as an inevitable spinoff, the availablity of MA training for the civilian population as well. R. McLain's interview with Gm. Kim in the January 2008 Black Belt ('Korean Martial Arts History', pp.101–105) makes it clear that Choi was not above an extremely heavy-handed kind of blackmail in promoting his own Oh Do Kwan interpretation of Kong Soo Do on the Korean MA world: most of the KSD instructors were doing their national service in the military, and, according to Gm. Kim, you had a choice of adopting Gen. Choi's system and getting a soft posting well behind enemy lines, or sticking to your own kwan system and winding up at the hellishly dangerous front.

In the aftermath of the war, as Burdick (`People and events of Taekwando's Formative Years', Journal of Asian Martial Arts 6:1 (1997); see also the later, slightly different version at http://www.budosportcapelle.nl/gesch.html) describes in detail, Choi was able to parlay his enormous prestige to successfully challenge Hwang Kee, Moo Duk Kwan founder, for leadership of the KMA community. The very possibility of such a challenge, implying that there indeed exists a position of exclusive dominance, is of course what needs to be explained, but it seems to me very likely that it was the war itself, and Choi's exploitation of his military status to impose his own view of KSD as a standard, which created the competitive scenario in which he himself emerged victorious. The military coup against Syngman Rhee in 1961, and the acendency of Gen. Park's regime for eighteen years following, gave Gen. Choi—an enthusiastic supporter of the coup—additional clout in the ROK, enabling him to use the Korean Taesudo Association as an effective weapon against the holdouts to kwan `unification', which in effect can now be seen as a code word for Oh Do Kwan control over MA training and curriculum in South Korea. The principal holdout was, of course, the Moo Duk Kwan, and Choi brought some formidable weapons to bear against it, as Burdick reports:

Many instructors rejoined the KTA in 1962 when the KTA decided to retest all black belts to establish national standards, an action that seemed ominous, given the obvious suport of the Park government...

Hwang Kee remained the most visible opponent of the KTA and, as a result, he was often harassed by KTA supporters. The KTA attempted to have the Muddukwan's charter with the Education Ministry revoked, but Hwang won the case under the Korean Supreme Court. According to Robert Shipley... Hwang's house was also `partially burned by "persons unknown'' as a result of his resistance to the taesudo movement. Hwang moved to the U.S. in May 1974, where he continued to teach tangsudo.'
​

Given his use of dangerous military assignments to threaten dissenters during the war, the de facto threat by the KTA he controlled to strip oppposing instructors of their belt rank after the war, his efforts to decertify the MDK and the criminal physical harrassment of Hwang Kee documented by Robert Shipley in his communiction to Black Belt in 1975, it seems fair to say that Gen. Choi was uncompromisingly ruthless in his effort to secure control over all aspects of the KSD scene in Korea; his drive to dominate the karate-based arts was, Burdick reports, sufficiently ambitious that in 1967 he actually tried to persuade Mas Oyama, at that time an icon of Japanese karate, to abandon the style he himself had founded, Kyokushin, and convert to Choi's version of kongsudo, which two years early had become Taekwondo and bore the complete imprint of Choi's vision of the art.

The story of Choi's fall from the dominant position he had gained is by now extremely old news in the KMA world, but in an important sense it was irrelevant. The crucible of the Korean War, if my interpretation of events is correct, created a situation in which one individual practitioner was able to define the Korean MA scene as a place of competition for monopolistic control over technical components of MA practice, something unheard of in any other Asian country. The replacement of ITF-style TKD with WTF-style TKD reflects nothing more than another instance of the kind of rifts and rivalry which can only develop in a situation where that sort of monopoly is institutionalized. (I hope I won't be misunderstood here: certainly there is a long history of rivalries among Japanese MA schools, going back into the era of the Samurai and the Tokugawa castle lords, and anecdotes about the role of such rivalries in Musahi Miyamoto's life have become legendary; but those rivalries did not represent the policy of a controlling state power seeking to enforce the dominance of a particular school or style. The latter situation was unique to Korea in the postwar era, so far as I can tell, and remains the single most important fact about the emergence of TKD as the `national MA' of Korea). I think Korea was particularly prone to such a top-down state monopolization of MA authority for reasons I've speculated about here.

The kwan era, representing the independent practice of TKD by martial artists developing and experimenting with the possibilities of Korean karate, represented the normal situation for Asian martial arts during this and subsequent periods. The enforced unity that was imposed on the kong soo do practiced by the kwans was from this point of view an aberration due to the military crisis in Korea caused by the Korean War, which enabled a high-ranking and influential officer to use his powerful position to advance his own agenda for kong soo do in part by suppressing competing approaches through the means documented above. The product of Gen. Choi's efforts was a military version of KSD which emphasized extremely forcible, linear power techniques for the purpose of not merely incapcitating but killing a possibly armed opponent in the shortest possible time, as discussed at length in O'Neil's quasi-monograph.

Subsequent events proved that while Choi's efforts might have been successful in bringing about a monopolistic approach to MAs that was uniquely Korean, the monopoly he created was owned not by him but by the apparat of the Korean government, which established the WTF to displace Choi's ITF and bring about a sea-change in the technical content of TKD. That is the crucial point, I think, the key to the way TKD has developed as an ongoing redefinition of Korea's national martial art by what is, effectively, an agency of its national government. As Korea's military crisis receded in the decades following the Korean War, the perception of national interest inevitably changed from ensuring the combat survivability of its troops to enhancing the international image of Korea as a progressive industrial nation, a `tiger' economy worth investing in and entitled to respect as a major regional player. The reinterpretation of TKD as a competitive sport rather than a combat art designed for lethal battlefield effectiveness is a natural development in the post-Cold War era, if you look at it—as the Korean government clearly does—through the cynical lens of realpolitik. For those of us for whom MAs are combat systems first and foremost, and which derive their technical content from their SD use in close quarters, the choice is one we've talked about in other threads, Terry: go along with the dilution of TKD into Korean wushu, or break with the Korean TKD Directorate and reconstruct old-school TKD in the Western context. For me, that one's a no-brainer!

 

[Zero]

Geeze Exile, that was a hell of a good and interesting read. It's leading up to New Years and at work there's nothing to do so I had time to go over your 'novelette'!!

I'm no longer training directly in TKD but did so all through high school in the 80s so found your take on the situation very interesting as I recall the politics between ITF, Federation and Unified streams.

Interestingly and maybe chillingly for some Korean ma purists is my understanding on the formation/history of TKD in that during the Japanese 'domination' of Korea from early 1900's to the end of WWII, various Japanese ma systems all but totally erased and systematically and deliberately replaced the traditional Korean forms, ie the Taek Kyan. Gn Choi (perhaps out of pure understanding and admiration of the linear and direct attacks from the Japanese styles and not from any other agenda) built on this background and promulgated TKD with hard core shotokan content.

Before Choi's time I think several kwans renamed Tae Soo Do as Taekwondo for its similar sounding to the original Tae Kyon of Korea?

 

[DArnold]

This thread is for the sole purpose of exploring the raise of TKD way back when and what made it grow so fast.

And on the other side of the coin the fall of TKD asi it is practice today.
Lets try to stay withen thse peramiter and be mature about it.

To me General Choi had alot of influence over everybody in Korea was this really true or was there somebody else behind the curtain pulling the strings? What made them join forces, I mean the early Kwons what was the bottom line to the nowadays kukkiwon, what did the Head of each kwon really get out og uniting?

Let start with this and work our way though history.

Terry,
Would you elaborate on the peramiters.
You could go off into tangents about styles, people, moral culture, personalities, durring times gone by. Which did you mean?

As TaeKwon-Do is one of the most popular martial arts in the world today would you define what you mean by its fall. Your statement seems more contradictory and meant to be adversarious rather than factual.
I would ask what has fallen.

 

[terryl965]

Terry,
Would you elaborate on the peramiters.
You could go off into tangents about styles, people, moral culture, personalities, durring times gone by. Which did you mean?

As TaeKwon-Do is one of the most popular martial arts in the world today would you define what you mean by its fall. Your statement seems more contradictory and meant to be adversarious rather than factual.
I would ask what has fallen.

Master Arnold when I mean the fall of TKD I'm more or less talking about the H2H combat of TKD, since the 90's it has been more sport orientated than H2H. I'm really not trying to be contradictory at all. TKD was once a prominenet combat ready full blown Art, to me it seem it has become more for sport-fitness and spiritual then what it was originally was meant to be.

Since you folks are more into the traditional side of TKD this may or may not make alot of sense to you. But here in Texas or at least where I'm at we have more sport TKD than actual H2H type of TKD. This really brothers me when people start to believe they are getting valueble SD principle from a sport TKD'er, who knows nothing about the real world.

I hope this answer some of your question Sir. U hope to spend some time with you when I'm in Colorado Springs. It was a pleasure meeting Kacey and thank you for the books.

 

[tellner]

I don't know. It was supposed to be Korean above all else. The high kicking was emphasized to distinguish between the new brand (TKD) and Brand X (Karate).

TKD has done a superb job of becoming bigger than Judo or Karate and spreading far and wide. That's a big part of its function.

It's certainly taught to soldiers and has been since it was invented. That's part of its nationalistic function. But it's not like TKD is going to be an important part of military encounters. Special troops will get specialized training. For the most part guns, planes, tanks and artillery rule the battlefield. Was it ever a comprehensive course in practical armed and unarmed combatives? I doubt it. Was it good for developing patriotic sentiment, confidence, aggression and physical fitness for soldiers? Yes. It does remarkably well at that.

To a very great degree the two goals of family-friendly popularity and suitability for battle are incompatible. The first sort rests on ideals of athletic development, fairness, safety, sportsmanship and being a good citizen. It challenges and develops people, particularly the young. It channels their energy productively. It makes them a part of something larger than themselves. It's great at what it does.

I'm not being disparaging, not even with left-handed compliments. The goals of personal development, athleticism, patriotic pride, camaraderie and friendly spirited competition are great. They are the sort of things that build healthy societies populated by healthy well-adjusted women and men.

The second type is much different. When you come down to it and strip away the self-congratulation, philosophical trappings, tradition and whatnot it's very simple. Martial arts that are designed for combat on a battlefield or for serious self protection are about crippling or (by preference) killing people. The training is designed to let you kill as quickly and efficiently as possible without mercy or hesitation. If it's comprehensive it will teach you how to hold it together so that you can keep killing people as long as necessary. If you're really lucky you'll get training that will let you reintegrate into a world where you aren't going to have to kill people every day. The philosophies and codes of behavior are not the Boy Scout Laws and fortune cookie nonsense that you find in most dojos. They are there to keep you from disobeying orders, cutting down citizens on the street, banditry and otherwise turning into a werewolf who has to be put down.

Much as we try to sugar coat it "combat martial arts" teach people how to do nasty brutal things without quite crossing the line into insanity or criminality. That's because combat is nasty and brutal and frequently breaks men's minds or removes all their inhibitions. It's not suitable for kids. It's not "fun for the whole family" unless you've got a really strange family.

Most people don't really want it no matter what they say. But they do want to feel like they're part of something larger and more significant than just themselves and they want assurances that they are connected to people who can kick serious booty and share in their skill. So we make a lot of noise about samurai or ninja or hwarang or Shaolin or whoever we think has "solved" the problem of violence. And we emphasize our shared lineage and skills. That way we've solved it too and can be confident without having to put our souls through a tree chipper.

"Traditional" is a difficult word, especially when you're talking about a system which is less than one human lifetime old. If you mean that the forms, uniform, and mix of techniques have changed enough that older practitioners are uncomfortable with them, you're the expert. If you mean that things have evolved in fifty years of a changing world I have to say "good". If you mean that it is not sufficient for the real reasonable self defense needs of the students and that it used to be, that's a serious matter for concern. You don't want people to believe they are competent when they are not. Does it strain the spiritual connection to people who can fight and thereby put the system's identity and unbroken chain of transmission at risk? That touches on what I was talking about earlier - "We can fight, so you don't have to prove you can become killers." If that's what you're talking about it calls the psychological legitimacy of the art into question. The South Korean Army's and Marines' toughness and success on the battlefield are a big part of TKD's self image. Make it less like whatever the military taught its troops at your chosen point in time and the almost totemic connection is broken.

 

[newGuy12]

To a very great degree the two goals of family-friendly popularity and suitability for battle are incompatible. The first sort rests on ideals of athletic development, fairness, safety, sportsmanship and being a good citizen. It challenges and develops people, particularly the young. It channels their energy productively. It makes them a part of something larger than themselves. It's great at what it does.

Yes! This is true! I have seen this happen myself. It is not just empty talk!

I'm not being disparaging, not even with left-handed compliments.

I, for one, believe you, and thank you for this post. Well said.

The goals of personal development, athleticism, patriotic pride, camaraderie and friendly spirited competition are great. They are the sort of things that build healthy societies populated by healthy well-adjusted women and men.

Some people do not value these things enough. They are important. I, for one, would prefer to practice this TKD in the company of my Master Instructor and his students, because we care for each other and work to a common goal!

Now, I *may* be able to learn to fight more viciously in some other school, say, oh, some krav-maga or other such "reality based" school. But, I, like many, wish to have a "full experience" (I'm at a loss for words) -- I want to have something MORE than just self defense, and my Dojang gives me this, over and over again.

I know that I can be beaten, oh, yes. Even a high ranking black belt can be beaten under the right circumstances. No one is unbeatable, no one.

But I also know that I can take my licks and give them out too, a LOT better NOW than before I practiced. How much fighting ability do *I* need, personally? That's a hard question to answer, but, I also need this School. It gives me structure in my life, above and beyond these techniques.

I, for one, am VERY HAPPY with the state of TKD as I know it today. I just have to express that it is so special to me, and surely I am not alone. So much uproar over the changes. Surely someone can preserve and pass on the "old ways", but today's TKD is still TKD to me!

 

[IcemanSK]

Tellner brought up some good points here (as did Robert) about the difference between the purpose of TKD then & now:how it was taught & how it is now. Few of us on this board have experience of TKD taught for military purposes. In fact, Master Wade is the only one (to my knowledge) that was taught TKD in the military during Vietnam. Despite a lot of us that talk about "the good 'ol days" of training, Master Wade is the only one here who can say he was taught TKD for combat purposes.

TKD & the way is it taught (& to whom it is taught) has changed. It is now a "family sport" that teaches discipline, & respect as it's reason it is taught to kids. Heck, "take TKD & get better grades" is often the selling point of more than a few schools.

There are multiple levels of benefit & multiple levels of appreciation. Most of us on MT have a desire for a depth of knowledge & appreciation that the average student that puts on a dobok does not. We are engaged in conversations on the deeper connections of the history, forms, & techniques of our Art. We love searching out the SD applications of forms, not because we necessarily live in a neighborhood where we may need it tomorrow: but rather because we know that's the original intent of the Art. We want to know the SD applications for the sake of knowing them.

There is value in TKD at all levels. We, who are instructors need to appreciate that folks who walk into the doors of our dojangs come with different levels of interest.

 

[terryl965]

Iceman I was over in Korea training in the seventies and what we trained was not this sport stuff. Remember my father tought while he was serving the Marine corp. Although you are right about Wade, there are others on this board that was in Korea training in those H2H combat style of TKD. I know I was never in the military officially but growing up on military basis all over the world and training in some of these places puts me in the same boat.

TKD & the way is it taught (& to whom it is taught) has changed. It is now a "family sport" that teaches discipline, & respect as it's reason it is taught to kids. Heck, "take TKD & get better grades" is often the selling point of more than a few schools.

This statement right here above kinda sums it up for me a Family sport, while my sons and wife plays the game at a high level there are still some of us that would like to think that a few can still see what TKD was meant to be a H2H combat ready art for SD. I have nothing but strong feling for my TKD and I make sure that every student knows from the get go that TKD is more than a sport and I teach both aspect of TKD.

I will sum this up by saying this, if you have ever really trained in the true art H2H side of TKD your heart can only weep a little for those that have never ever really felt this type of raw power in the Korean way of teaching and I'm sure Wade would agree.


Iceman not knocking anything just would like people to really know what they have missed from an explosive art such as TKD.

 

[SageGhost83]

The rise and fall of Taekwondo? I am assuming that you are implying that Taekwondo has fallen as a serious, comprehensive self defence system. I practice WTF and I harbor no illusions as to what my brand of TKD was meant for - sport. I guess you could say that the fall of Taekwondo as a serious, comprehensive self defense system started when WTF became bigger and more widespread than ITF. This has given the impression that Taekwondo is nothing more than a sport, when it is more accurate to say that ITF is the self defence body of the art and WTF is the sporting body of the art. I have noticed that a lot of schools, particularly in the usa, are not associated with the WTF and teach their own curricula which include a fair amount of legitimate self defense techs. Perhaps Taekwondo fell with the WTF and olympic boom, but perhaps it is starting to rise once again with more and more schools establishing their own sets of standards and orgs - kinda reintroducing the missing elements of self defense back into Taekwondo, even if it is in the form of adding western style boxing to it to make the style more well rounded. Forgive me for blabbing. In short, it rose when it was still "hardcore korean shotokan" and it fell when it became "olympic korean footsy", but it is rising again now that it is slowly becoming "Taekwondo + boxing + CQC + whatever form of wrestling you use to add a ground game to it".

As an aside, I think the nationalist element ruined parts of it, too. They replaced the original kata, which had many lessons to teach concerning self defense, with new kata, which are empty shells that were put in place just to make the style more korean. This is a major pet peeve of mine, and one of the reasons why I still practice my original shotokan katas to this very day.

 

[terryl965]

The rise and fall of Taekwondo? I am assuming that you are implying that Taekwondo has fallen as a serious, comprehensive self defence system. I practice WTF and I harbor no illusions as to what my brand of TKD was meant for - sport. I guess you could say that the fall of Taekwondo as a serious, comprehensive self defense system started when WTF became bigger and more widespread than ITF. This has given the impression that Taekwondo is nothing more than a sport, when it is more accurate to say that ITF is the self defence body of the art and WTF is the sporting body of the art. I have noticed that a lot of schools, particularly in the usa, are not associated with the WTF and teach their own curricula which include a fair amount of legitimate self defense techs. Perhaps Taekwondo fell with the WTF and olympic boom, but perhaps it is starting to rise once again with more and more schools establishing their own sets of standards and orgs - kinda reintroducing the missing elements of self defense back into Taekwondo, even if it is in the form of adding western style boxing to it to make the style more well rounded. Forgive me for blabbing. In short, it rose when it was still "hardcore korean shotokan" and it fell when it became "olympic korean footsy", but it is rising again now that it is slowly becoming "Taekwondo + boxing + CQC + whatever form of wrestling you use to add a ground game to it".

As an aside, I think the nationalist element ruined parts of it, too. They replaced the original kata, which had many lessons to teach concerning self defense, with new kata, which are empty shells that were put in place just to make the style more korean. This is a major pet peeve of mine, and one of the reasons why I still practice my original shotokan katas to this very day.

Nice post sageghost83 you hit the nail with the hammer

 

[exile]

Nice post sageghost83 you hit the nail with the hammer

I second that, sageghost!

 

[Decker]

...when it is more accurate to say that ITF is the self defence body of the art and WTF is the sporting body of the art. ...

Do you mean the different teaching methods/focus, or every aspect of them, including the poomsae/tuls and sparring? Sorry for my ignorance: where I'm from, ITF is practically non-existent if you don't know where to look.

As someone who's been training in WTF/Kukkiwon style TKD, I suppose it'd be good for me sign up at an ITF school as well?

 

[dancingalone]

when it is more accurate to say that ITF is the self defence body of the art

Is that really a true statement though? ITF TKD has its silly stuff too like sine wave movement, and the school I visited (not ITF but clearly with an ITF heritage) did lots of sport sparring with no boon hae practice that I could discern.

It's so hard to generalize... In the end it's all about the individual instructor and what they want to teach. You're a lucky one if your instructor actually chooses to teach meaningful self-defense.