Terry, my take on Taekkyon is actually embedded in my posts
here,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here. The article by Capener I refer to can be found
here.
I think pretty much everything that the available document base allows us to infer is covered in those posts. YoungMan's posts constitute the kind of points that have been repeatedly raised in connection with taekkyon in the past, points that a serious skeptic like me has to address in order to be able to make the case against taekkyon having a measurable role in the development of TKD technique, specifically it's kicking techs.
Here's a comparison: in the 1920s, the great linguist Edward Sapir argued that the Sino-Tibetan languages and the Athapaskan languages (which includes Navaho as a member of its southern branch) were historically related at enormous time depths, and pointed out in evidence that the languages of both families are tone languages. Since it was well-understood at the time (even without the confirming DNA-marker comparisons that have recently tied Amerindian populations to particular groups in northern Siberia) that the aboriginal inhabitants of North and South America originated in Asia, the comparison had a superficial plausibility. But it turned out, as was shown by later research on both sides of the Bering Strait, that tone was an ancient feature in
neither family. It evolved separately in both cases. This is a similar kind of situation to the kind of thing that appears to have happened in the case of taekkyon, except that again, it looks very much like 'modern taekkyon' adopted its kicks from the continually higher kicks TKD incorporated from the end of the Korean War era on.
There's a very nice article by Simon O'Neil, currently completing a book on boon hae/bunkai for the TKD hyungs (emphasizing the Taekgeuks, but with some coverage of the Ch'ang Hon forms as well) in which he mentions that Koreans appear to
like to kick, both for sport (as seems to have been the actual status of taekkyon in the 19th c.) and in their martial art practice (unfortunately, you have to subscribe to his newsletter to get access to the article). They kick high, he believes, because for them, kicking is the striking technique par excellence, and they admire virtuousity in kicking technique. If so, there's no need to rely on the ill-founded historical claims about taekkyon itself to account for the elaboration of kicks as striking weapons in TKD...
