TKD and TSD
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stoneheart
Purple Belt
At the risk of starting a controversy, I don't see much difference between the two arts. TSD still uses the Pyong An forms, and the TSD I have been exposed to has more emphasis on hip twist, but that could simply be an individual instructor idiosyncrasy.
The people who use the name Tang Soo Do today are the fruit from Hwang Kee's Moo Duk Kwan. Mr. Kee used this name for a while to describe his hard style martial art. Some of his students left him for political reasons in Korea and joined the Taekwondo umbrella, using the new name but still sometimes still teaching the Moo Duk Kwan material. Other times, they shifted completely to TKD, even adopting the new TKD forms, but surely the stamp of Mr. Kee's martial arts is within their own skills and within their own students in turn.
There's an independent TSD dojo in the same shopping center I visit to buy groceries. I've watched a few classes. It's really much the same experience as with the WTF school a few miles away: kicking, kicking, and more kicking.
The people who use the name Tang Soo Do today are the fruit from Hwang Kee's Moo Duk Kwan. Mr. Kee used this name for a while to describe his hard style martial art. Some of his students left him for political reasons in Korea and joined the Taekwondo umbrella, using the new name but still sometimes still teaching the Moo Duk Kwan material. Other times, they shifted completely to TKD, even adopting the new TKD forms, but surely the stamp of Mr. Kee's martial arts is within their own skills and within their own students in turn.
There's an independent TSD dojo in the same shopping center I visit to buy groceries. I've watched a few classes. It's really much the same experience as with the WTF school a few miles away: kicking, kicking, and more kicking.
Good question, Terry! Given that they were one and the same within the Moo Duk Kwan until the Big Split in 1965, what's happened technically in the forty-three years intervening? It's very hard to get a sense of this from the TSD literature. The WTSDA does have tournament competition, obviously not on the scale of the WTF Olympic behemoth, but it's there for sure—the 2002 World Championship tournament photos here make it pretty clear that this was a mammoth affair.
One thing I have noticed is that TSD people seem for the most part much more candid in acknowledging the Okinawan/Japanese antecedents for their art, and in taking advantage of the bunkai worked out by Okinawan and Shotokan stylists for hyungs as the combat techs they work on for SD training (some great posts on this by Masters Jay Penfil and Rob Rivers); their hyung syllabi, up till the present anyway, are still much more indebted to the O/J traditional kata than TKD, which in both major tracks has tried to purge as much as possible of its O/J karate ancestry. There's been some interesting posting on the sources of the TSD hyung repertoire recently here.
zDom
Senior Master
I'm still trying to track down (U.S. Moo Sul Kwan founder) Lee H. Park's taekwondo roots.
I know he became associated with the Chang Moo Kwan later on and was good friends and fishing buddies with Nam Suk Lee, but I haven't been able to find out where he started his TKD training at.
I can say this though: I can definately see some similarities to Tang Soo Do in MSK TKD such as:
• emphasis on hip twist
• half-circle stepping
• a self-defense orientation
• black-trimmed crossover-lapel uniform style
I believe it GM Ed Sell (U.S. Chung Do Kwan) is the one who pointed out to my friend, Tim Wall, and I that our TKD (from MSK) was very Tang Soo Do-ish.
I know he became associated with the Chang Moo Kwan later on and was good friends and fishing buddies with Nam Suk Lee, but I haven't been able to find out where he started his TKD training at.
I can say this though: I can definately see some similarities to Tang Soo Do in MSK TKD such as:
• emphasis on hip twist
• half-circle stepping
• a self-defense orientation
• black-trimmed crossover-lapel uniform style
I believe it GM Ed Sell (U.S. Chung Do Kwan) is the one who pointed out to my friend, Tim Wall, and I that our TKD (from MSK) was very Tang Soo Do-ish.
I'm afraid this thread isn't getting the attention it deserves, especially from the TSD folk. C'mon, folks, please talk to us about this! I think it's very important that we understand this, and here's why:
TSD and TKD separated just prior to the big push—only, I'd rather call it a forced march—to the Olympics for TKD. In a sense, TSD is what TKD might have been had the tournament ethic not taken over the latter's curriculum. It's like the lineage of dogs: we now know, based on careful DNA analysis, that the northen Spitz dogs—Siberian huskies (like my poor late lamented Connor, may he rest in peace), Malamutes, Samoyeds and a few others—are actually genetically more conservative than poodles, mastiffs and Scotties. They are genetically closer to wolves to a significant degree. That kind of fact is a novelty in biology: the idea that of two offspring of a parent species, one is actually closer to the source than the other after the same length of time. And I think that TSD is like the Spitz branch: it's closer to Kwan era KMA than TKD is. So if we can understand the difference between the two, we have some idea of what has `happened' to TKD as a result of its Olympic tournament career, and we also have a better sense of how far it has diverged from Kwan era practice. TSD is in this sense something of a time capsule of postwar KMA, before it lost its combat credibility in the opinion of much of the MA community.
It means, futher, that we could use TSD as a kind of probe for what the MAs of the Kwan era in Korea were really like. We still don't have a very good idea. I hope the TSD folk will give us some input here... this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately: TSD is as close to a `snapshot' of an earlier phase of KMA as we're likely to get. Not that it hasn't changed somewhat too in the interim, and yes, I know that each Kwan had somewhat different curricula, training methods and hyungs... but still....
TSD and TKD separated just prior to the big push—only, I'd rather call it a forced march—to the Olympics for TKD. In a sense, TSD is what TKD might have been had the tournament ethic not taken over the latter's curriculum. It's like the lineage of dogs: we now know, based on careful DNA analysis, that the northen Spitz dogs—Siberian huskies (like my poor late lamented Connor, may he rest in peace), Malamutes, Samoyeds and a few others—are actually genetically more conservative than poodles, mastiffs and Scotties. They are genetically closer to wolves to a significant degree. That kind of fact is a novelty in biology: the idea that of two offspring of a parent species, one is actually closer to the source than the other after the same length of time. And I think that TSD is like the Spitz branch: it's closer to Kwan era KMA than TKD is. So if we can understand the difference between the two, we have some idea of what has `happened' to TKD as a result of its Olympic tournament career, and we also have a better sense of how far it has diverged from Kwan era practice. TSD is in this sense something of a time capsule of postwar KMA, before it lost its combat credibility in the opinion of much of the MA community.
It means, futher, that we could use TSD as a kind of probe for what the MAs of the Kwan era in Korea were really like. We still don't have a very good idea. I hope the TSD folk will give us some input here... this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately: TSD is as close to a `snapshot' of an earlier phase of KMA as we're likely to get. Not that it hasn't changed somewhat too in the interim, and yes, I know that each Kwan had somewhat different curricula, training methods and hyungs... but still....
I'm with you, Terry... where are they?
You TSD folks—don't you want to talk to us? We're identical twins, we are!—the same Kwan, split down the middle (well, not exactly, but enough as makes no difference) was the `egg' that contained both TSD and the MDK version of TKD...
This is an interesting question and it has been addressed pretty thouroughly in the past in the TSD forum. Anyway, I think that it can safely be said that TKD and TSD were one in the same 40 years ago. Now, they are completely different arts. With TSD being very hard to characterize.
Steel Tiger
Senior Master
Do you think it is hard to characterise because of the similarity to TKD or because of the differences? Or is it difficult to ascertain what the differences are that created the dichotomy?
OK, so we have a place to start from: TKD and TSD are completely different arts. This is the juicy part, UpNorth: how do you see them as different? Even if TSD is hard to characterize, is it not possible to apply some negatives the relevant properties of TKD to indicate where the two part company? I have to say, I've thrashed around in the TSD forum many a time and I still have, even with all those discussions, a poor-to-none idea of what the differences are. Can you tell us?
TKD went down a path and pretty much became an art where there was not that much difference between different organizations. TSD, on the other hand, splintered and splintered again until what you get with one organization is wildly different then what you would get from another organization. This is one of the reasons I don't recommend TSD to people looking for a martial art. I really need to be in a particular dojang and I need to see what they are teaching before I could do that.
The forms. The lack of sport focus. The sparring. Those three things are pretty much the big three when it comes to finding the differences between TKD and TSD. Almost all TSD still uses the old okinawan forms and TKD dropped that years ago. Almost all TSD does not have the sport focus that is prevelent in almost all TKD dojangs. And lastly, every TSD dojang I've been to has sparring that is more comprehensive then TKD. We use more then just our feet and more targets are available for striking and most have some sort of grappling and sweeping component...even if that syllabus is small.
With that being said, I feel that TSD has more potential to change for the good then TKD. TKD, with its sport focus, its bunkai-less forms, and its very limited and sporty sparring will just continue down the path of becoming a highly specialized sport. While TSD has the potential to get back to its roots en masse and become a better regarded martial art.
So now my next question—I've been mulling this for a long time. At my school it's like this:
(i) forms: We do the Palgwes, but also the Pyung-Ahn, as well as Rohai and a number of other Japanese katas. We don't do the Taegeuk forms at all. And I spend a good deal of time worrying about and experimenting with various alternative bunkai for the forms we do. I'm not good at it, but I think I'm probably getting better—it's a long-term skill, like pretty much anything else worth doing.
(ii) sport: No emphasis on sport. Much more self-defense, using elbow strikes, knee strikes, and much of the other repertoire of `classical' Kwan era KMA.
(iii) sparring: Again, minimal emphasis, much more concentration on close-in self-defense with all available weapons. At least as much in the way of hand/arm techs as foot techs; probably more.
So here's my question: am I doing TSD, as vs. TKD? If what you mentioned are the defining criteria (as opposed to properties that have sort of become attached to TKD along the way, but aren't really criterial—in contrast to e.g. the way the notion `unmarried' is criterial for the meaning of the word `batchelor'), and I do a striking, Kwan-derived MA... what you're saying seems to suggest that the answer to that question has to be yes. But I still believe that what I'm doing is just a certain form of TKD that doesn't yet have a generally recognized name, but is going to become more widespread in the the not-so-far future.
I agree with you 100%. But with this caveat: I think there will be a fair number of people up the line who approach their TKD the same way I do, and I think the arts will split, with the jutsu version of TKD going its own way and leaving the big TKD orgs behind. They'll be in the minority, of course, but they will be there....
Thoughts on this?
rmclain
Black Belt
As far as I know, Park Yi-hyun was a close friend of Dr. Hee young Kim. I believe Park Yi-hyun came from Judo. Both Dr. Kim Hee-young and Park Yi-hyun gave a Hapkido and Judo demo at Delmar Stadium in 1970.
I suppose it is possible he later studied a kongsoo-do type art. But, I haven't heard about that. Lee Nam-sok stopped teaching in the 1960's. Later (around 1995) he came to the US and started teaching again. His emphasis from the 1960's until 1995 was promoting TKD, not instructing or training. So, I don't know how much he would have passed along instruction-wise. Even Lee Nam-sok didn't teach the original Changmoo-kwan curriculum when he started instructing in 1995 (he probably forgot most of it).
R. McLain
Catalyst
Blue Belt
Exile, thank you so much for aking your question. I've had the same question since I joined this forum. I'm told that our Art is based on TKD, but the terminology, discussion, etc. in the TSD Section makes much more sense to me than in the TKD Section.
The practices in your dojang sound like a lot like the practices in the dojang that I train in (including your recent posts on low kicks that I saw on another thread). I'm glad you had the courage to ask the question - I'm wondering the same thing and I'm hoping to find answers.
OP
OP
So here's my question: am I doing TSD, as vs. TKD? If what you mentioned are the defining criteria (as opposed to properties that have sort of become attached to TKD along the way, but aren't really criterial—in contrast to e.g. the way the notion `unmarried' is criterial for the meaning of the word `batchelor'), and I do a striking, Kwan-derived MA... what you're saying seems to suggest that the answer to that question has to be yes. But I still believe that what I'm doing is just a certain form of TKD that doesn't yet have a generally recognized name, but is going to become more widespread in the the not-so-far future.
Exile you are doing the same TKD as me, TSD we are not because our GM calls it TKD and alot of folks call it opld school which would emply TSD. I for one know that I do TKD and not TSD but can conclude we do alot of the same techs. as TSD style schools out there, the sport is second and the Art is always first.
Exile you are doing the same TKD as me, TSD we are not because our GM calls it TKD and alot of folks call it opld school which would emply TSD. I for one know that I do TKD and not TSD but can conclude we do alot of the same techs. as TSD style schools out there, the sport is second and the Art is always first.
Hmm... coming from an ITF background, we focus on technical proficiency, rather than the "sport" aspect - which there is much less of in ITF TKD anyway, since it's the WTF that's in the Olympics. There is also much more consistency in terms of requirements (the pattern set used is the Ch'ang H'on pattern set - people may learn others, but that one set is required throughout the ITF) and terminology (more consistent - in part because all do the same patterns) than there is in the WTF, where the focus of the association is different.
As far as bunkai-less forms... well, from my training, that just isn't so. We go through the possible applications of moves all the time, and I encourage my students to experiment and find applications that I haven't taught them.
And then, we do use our feet extensively, and include some grappling in the curriculum, beginning at white belt.
Now, I realize that you qualified your distinctions with the words "almost all" - but what I described above is prevalent throughout the ITF, with the possible exception of the grappling, so IMHO you're missing a significant chunk of the TKD community in your analysis.
I'm not sure. Don't you practice Song Moo Kwan? We have a SMK dojang near us that is very popular and very large. Is this the same style that you are training?
http://www.gmmaa.com/
If it is, then I can comment more...
Possibly, but, I still say at least one of my criteria still fits in that ITF TKD does not practice the old Okinawan hyung (as far as I know).
Also, regarding the bunkai-less forms, I'm very interested in whether "figuring out applications to the form" has any formalized component in the ITF curriculum. My guess is that it either is not there or is not emphasized the way that most kata based systems in Japan and Okinawa emphasize them.
Lastly, I must admit, I don't have much experience with ITF TKD. Most (if not all) of what we have in my region is Olympic style. However, I've seen some sparring at a tournament and I watched a demonstration at a Dojang in the Twin Cities.
From what I have seen, it doesn't look that different a lot of the other TKD out there. The sparring rules are similar and there is extensive use of the feet. The forms are different, but most practicioners still display the same misconceptions regarding forms that most KMAists have, and the grappling curriculum is limited to psuedo kata list of ho sin shul. Lastly, I felt that the same philosophic disconnect that is present in most kwan based when it comes to aspects of their curriculum was present.
ITF may be different in some ways, but to me, it's still obviously TKD.
