# 'Korean karate': candor and denial



## exile

I've been wondering about this for quite a while: while it's not unusual for Tang Soo Do people to refer to their art as Korean karate, anyone who does that within Taekwondo is almost certainly going to get a line of flak from representatives of the Korean TKD directorate, or what Lenin would have referred to as their 'useful idiots' in the West, that TKD is a purely Korean art, has no substantial debt to Shotokan or other Japanese karate styles, and represents a significantly different fighting _system_ from karate. 

Now here's what I find very strange about this: Hwang Kee was the one and only founder of one of the original five kwans who did not learn his martial arts as a Korean visitor to a Japanese karate dojo in the 1930s. Lee Won Kuk (Chung Do Kwan), Byung Jik Ro (Song Moo Kwan) and Choi Hong Hi (Oh Do Kwan) earned dan belts in Shotokan, and Yoon Pyung In (Chang Moo Kwan) earned a 5th Dan from Toyama Kanken in Shudokan. Hwang Kee alone did not study in Japan, and denied all his lifeuntil his very last book, _The History of Moo Doo Kwan_, published in 1995that the Pyung Ahn hyungs were borrowed karate forms; as it turned out, by his own admission, they were nothing but the Pinan katas (in their Heian avatar), learned secondhand from a library book belonging to a Seoul train station where he worked (see here for some unpleasant documentation). 

You'd think, given HK's own clear, conscious rejection of what he knew to be truethe Japanese origins of his own 'core' hyungsthat TSD culture would have developed the nationalist mythology of TKD's 'ancient Korean' origins to a much greater degree than TKD (after all, Song Moo Kwan is an almost literal translation of _Shotokan_how much more candid can you _get??_) Yet it seems to be the TSD people who practice Okinawan/Japanese kata under barely transliterated Korean names, and who talk about, and compare, karate and TSD bunkai, and who (for the most part) acknowledge the authority of the Okinawan karate masters who have preserved the bunkai for these forms for the last half-dozen or so generations. Much of the TKD world, on the other handincluding the American branch plants of the Korean TKD directorateare engaged in promoting the same revisionist legendary fantasies (as per the bit of fraudulent mythmongering here) that began with General Choi, and which one hears in all kinds of venueseven, occasionally, in the otherwise cold- and clear-eyed annals of MartialTalk.

Does anyone have an explanation for why TSD people seem so much more comfortable with the sources of their art in O/J karate, even though the founder was the odd man out in never having studied karate formally in Japan? I have to say, the longer I've thought about it, the more perplexing it seems to me...


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## JWLuiza

exile said:


> I've been wondering about this for quite a while: while it's not unusual for Tang Soo Do people to refer to their art as Korean karate, anyone who does that within Taekwondo is almost certainly going to get a line of flak from representatives of the Korean TKD directorate, or what Lenin would have referred to as their 'useful idiots' in the West, that TKD is a purely Korean art, has no substantial debt to Shotokan or other Japanese karate styles, and represents a significantly different fighting _system_ from karate.
> 
> Now here's what I find very strange about this: Hwang Kee was the one and only founder of one of the original five kwans who did not learn his martial arts as a Korean visitor to a Japanese karate dojo in the 1930s. Lee Won Kuk (Chung Do Kwan), Byung Jik Ro (Song Moo Kwan) and Choi Hong Hi (Oh Do Kwan) earned dan belts in Shotokan, and Yoon Pyung In (Chang Moo Kwan) earned a 5th Dan from Toyama Kanken in Shudokan. Hwang Kee alone did not study in Japan, and denied all his lifeuntil his very last book, _The History of Moo Doo Kwan_, published in 1995that the Pyung Ahn hyungs were borrowed karate forms; as it turned out, by his own admission, they were nothing but the Pinan katas (in their Heian avatar), learned secondhand from a library book belonging to a Seoul train station where he worked (see here for some unpleasant documentation).
> 
> You'd think, given HK's own clear, conscious rejection of what he knew to be truethe Japanese origins of his own 'core' hyungsthat TSD culture would have developed the nationalist mythology of TKD's 'ancient Korean' origins to a much greater degree than TKD (after all, Song Moo Kwan is an almost literal translation of _Shotokan_how much more candid can you _get??_) Yet it seems to be the TSD people who practice Okinawan/Japanese kata under barely transliterated Korean names, and who talk about, and compare, karate and TSD bunkai, and who (for the most part) acknowledge the authority of the Okinawan karate masters who have preserved the bunkai for these forms for the last half-dozen or so generations. Much of the TKD world, on the other handincluding the American branch plants of the Korean TKD directorateare engaged in promoting the same revisionist legendary fantasies (as per the bit of fraudulent mythmongering here) that began with General Choi, and which one hears in all kinds of venueseven, occasionally, in the otherwise cold- and clear-eyed annals of MartialTalk.
> 
> Does anyone have an explanation for why TSD people seem so much more comfortable with the sources of their art in O/J karate, even though the founder was the odd man out in never having studied karate formally in Japan? I have to say, the longer I've thought about it, the more perplexing it seems to me...



The internet.

This process really changed when we all realized Ship Soo was Jutte and Wansu was Enpi and Oh Sip Sa Bo was etc etc...  And the story that we didn't know who created this form was too obviously hogwash.  What was so interesting was the speed with which the TSD world quickly embraced the truth... to the point that it didn't really matter.  Out of sight out of mind.  

There is a TSD old school practitioner, John Hancock, he can tell you a great story about what happened when he tried to broach this subject with H.C. Hwang in the 1980s.


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## SageGhost83

Interesting, and I find it to be extremely ironic given the circumstances of the the two arts (TKD and TSD). I don't do TSD, but I would venture to guess that since TSD was never used as an ultra-nationalist tool to spread Korean identity, then the need to separate it from its Japanese roots was never anywhere near as strong as TKD's need to do so. So much stock was put into TKD by its founders to make it the national art of Korea and to give it a Korean identity that to suggest and/or reveal that the art actually had roots in another country, a hated country in their eyes too, was very offensive to them. Whereas, TSD was never built up to be something that it was not, therefore their practitioners have no problem admitting the truth about their art. I guess that admitting that their national art actually came from another country and not their own would cause them to lose an ungodly amount of face. TSD was never made out to be something that it actually isn't, so it is no big deal to reveal what it actually is. Hwang Kee denied the origins of the Hyungs, but it was more of an omission than a revision on his part. He never called his art "The Korean Martial Art", and he never claimed that the art was practiced by ancient Korean warriors. Furthermore, he never made such claims one of the major cornerstones and/or selling points of his art. So TSD has nothing to lose and never had anything to lose when it came to reavealing the truth. It is okay for a Tang So Doin to openly admit the truth, whereas a Taekwandoin is forced to accept revisionist history and wild claims lest he be frowned upon by his own martial arts establishment for revealing the uncomfortable truth that nobody within the style seems to want to accept.


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## e ship yuk

Marketing.

Several instructors I've spoken with, who trained with Koreans back when they first started coming over, say they called it karate because that's the word everyone knew.  If you said "tangsoodo" or "taekwondo", people would have no idea what you were talking about, but if you said "karate," they'd say, "Oh!  Hi-YAH!" and understand.

Why are the TSD guys okay with acknowledging their roots?  Likely because they show.  Who can't look at those forms and notice the similarities?  Even if they denied it before, once GM Hwang acknowledged the ancestry in his book in 1995, the cat was out.  No use denying it after that.  But... he did this after starting the introduction of the Chil Sung and Yuk-ro forms.



> (after all, Song Moo Kwan is an almost literal translation of _Shotokan_how much more candid can you _get??_)



I believe both Lee Won-kuk and Byung Jik-ro were open in naming their schools after the Shotokan.  There's an anecdote about GM Lee saying something to the effect of "You do not name the child after the father."  True?  Your guess is as good as mine.



> There is a TSD old school practitioner, John Hancock, he can tell you a great story about what happened when he tried to broach this subject with H.C. Hwang in the 1980s.



Heh... exile actually linked to that article.


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## SageGhost83

Also, a friend of mine told me this story:

There is a swimming pool outside next to the neighbor's house and it is ice cold outside because it is deep in the winter. TSD dipped its big toe into the pool but pulled it out very quickly and decided to stay away from it. However, TKD not only dove head first into the pool, but started swimming in it and doing the back stroke. Now TKD is in the hospital and being treated for hypothermia. The doctors ask how she caught hypothermia in the first place and she says that she was outside working in the brutal winter and doing something noble because she is too ashamed to admit that she dove into a swimming pool during the winter in the first place. The doctors initially buy her story, but upon further study of her condition learn that it doesnt' quite add up. Her clothes are too wet and her hair is soaked, as well. They call her parents, and upon their questioning of the neighbor who was actually watching the whole thing without either TSD or TKD being aware of him, they find out that TSD dipped her big toe into the pool and that TKD has actually dove into the pool and gone swimming in it. TSD has no problem admitting to the parents that she stuck her big toe into the swimming pool but quickly pulled it out after realizing that it was a bad idea. However, TKD denied and still continues to deny, to both her parents and the doctors, that she dove into the swimming pool even though all of the evidence and eyewitness stories prove otherwise. Now why does TSD have no problem admitting its mistake? it is because it was a minor mistake that is easily forgotten. TKD hasn't and still won't admit its mistake because it was a very stupid one to make and she would be a total laughing stock if she were to admit it.


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## exile

SageGhost83 said:


> Also, a friend of mine told me this story:
> 
> There is a swimming pool outside next to the neighbor's house and it is ice cold outside because it is deep in the winter. TSD dipped its big toe into the pool but pulled it out very quickly and decided to stay away from it. However, TKD not only dove head first into the pool, but started swimming in it and doing the back stroke. Now TKD is in the hospital and being treated for hypothermia. The doctors ask how she caught hypothermia in the first place and she says that she was outside working in the brutal winter and doing something noble because she is too ashamed to admit that she dove into a swimming pool during the winter in the first place. The doctors initially buy her story, but upon further study of her condition learn that it doesnt' quite add up. Her clothes are too wet and her hair is soaked, as well. They call her parents, and upon their questioning of the neighbor who was actually watching the whole thing without either TSD or TKD being aware of him, they find out that TSD dipped her big toe into the pool and that TKD has actually dove into the pool and gone swimming in it. TSD has no problem admitting to the parents that she stuck her big toe into the swimming pool but quickly pulled it out after realizing that it was a bad idea. However, TKD denied and still continues to deny, to both her parents and the doctors, that she dove into the swimming pool even though all of the evidence and eyewitness stories prove otherwise. Now why does TSD have no problem admitting its mistake? it is because it was a minor mistake that is easily forgotten. TKD hasn't and still won't admit its mistake because it was a very stupid one to make and she would be a total laughing stock if she were to admit it.



Heavens above, that is a very funny image... :lol:


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## MBuzzy

As E Ship Yuk said.....I agree, it is all marketing.  My Korean instructor in Korea always called it Korean Karate.  But he taught on a military base.  The average American knows exactly what TKD is, but has never heard of TSD.  Karate is just the generic word anyway!  Tang Soo Do is a translation of the characters for Karate, so we're basically just calling it what it is in a different language.  

Plus, it is too cumbersome to say "Japanese Karate with some chinese influence, brought together by a Korean and practiced in Korea."


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## e ship yuk

MBuzzy said:


> Tang Soo Do is a translation of the characters for Karate, so we're basically just calling it what it is in a different language.



You know, I just recalled an older book on Taekwondo, I think by S. Henry Cho, that said very clearly it was called karate in public... I wonder if he meant Karate, or one of the Korean variants, Tang/Kongsoodo...

Can't seem to find the quote online, but he did write a book called "Taekwondo: The Secrets of Korean Karate."  My instructor had that book, so it may be in there somewhere...

Son Duk-song of the Chung Do Kwan also wrote a couple of books that have Korean Karate in the title: "Korean Karate" and "Black Belt Korean Karate."  The former is pretty common, but the latter is pretty rare; hey, there's actually a couple of copies up on Half.com for about $100, with shipping... good price for them.  Cheapest on Amazon is around $180.



MBuzzy said:


> Plus, it is too cumbersome to say "Japanese Karate with some chinese influence, brought together by a Korean and practiced in Korea."



Tangsoodo sums that one up pretty nicely, when you think about it: the Korean pronunciation of a Japanese art whose name refers to China.  You'd almost think they did that on purpose.


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## JWLuiza

e ship yuk said:


> You know, I just recalled an older book on Taekwondo, I think by S. Henry Cho, that said very clearly it was called karate in public... I wonder if he meant Karate, or one of the Korean variants, Tang/Kongsoodo...
> 
> Can't seem to find the quote online, but he did write a book called "Taekwondo: The Secrets of Korean Karate."  My instructor had that book, so it may be in there somewhere...
> 
> Son Duk-song of the Chung Do Kwan also wrote a couple of books that have Korean Karate in the title: "Korean Karate" and "Black Belt Korean Karate."  The former is pretty common, but the latter is pretty rare; hey, there's actually a couple of copies up on Half.com for about $100, with shipping... good price for them.  Cheapest on Amazon is around $180.
> 
> 
> 
> Tangsoodo sums that one up pretty nicely, when you think about it: the Korean pronunciation of a Japanese art whose name refers to China.  You'd almost think they did that on purpose.



First,  Exile:  Sorry I didn't click all the links, still good post!

Second, I'm wondering how much chinese influence that TSD groups have that broke off pre-Chil Sun, Yuk Rho, and Hwa Sun...  My school falls roughly into that category and we have almost nil chinese influence.  It would be interesting to compare.


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## foot2face

exile said:


> ...it's not unusual for Tang Soo Do people to refer to their art as Korean karate, anyone who does that within Taekwondo is almost certainly going to get a line of flak from representatives of the Korean TKD directorate, or what Lenin would have referred to as their 'useful idiots' in the West, that TKD is a purely Korean art, has no substantial debt to Shotokan or other Japanese karate styles, and represents a significantly different fighting _system_ from karate.
> 
> ...acknowledge the authority of the Okinawan karate masters who have preserved the bunkai for these forms for the last half-dozen or so generations. Much of the TKD world, on the other handincluding the American branch plants of the Korean TKD directorateare engaged in promoting the same revisionist legendary fantasies (as per the bit of fraudulent mythmongering here) that began with General Choi, and which one hears in all kinds of venueseven, occasionally, in the otherwise cold- and clear-eyed annals of MartialTalk.


You see Exile, these are precisely the kinds of comments you continually make that attract the ire of other TKDist. You may practice a variant of TKD that has remained very close to its JMA roots but many others do not. For some reason you refuse to acknowledge the fact that many TKDist practice a MA that has evolved far from its JMA roots. A system that is governed by different philosophies, employs different tactics, make use of different training methods and relies on a different skill set. How much more needs to be changed before you accept that its no longer karate? Implying that those who dont bow down to the superiority of the Okinawan masters and their bunkai are useful idiots myth mongering Korean propaganda, a sentiment youve expressed numerous times, is perhaps not the most productive manner by to engage others in a debate.
Be Well -F2F


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## shesulsa

Goodness.  

I think I'll try Judo.

Aloha!


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## terryl965

shesulsa said:


> Goodness.
> 
> I think I'll try Judo.
> 
> Aloha!


 
I'm with you Judo it is. Can I buy a round of Judo for everybody, Judo on me


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## IcemanSK

terryl965 said:


> I'm with you Judo it is. Can I buy a round of Judo for everybody, Judo on me


 
I'm in!


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## exile

foot2face said:


> You see Exile, these are precisely the kinds of comments you continually make that attract the ire of other TKDist. You may practice a variant of TKD that has remained very close to its JMA roots but many others do not. For some reason you refuse to acknowledge the fact that many TKDist practice a MA that has evolved far from its JMA roots. A system that is governed by different philosophies, employs different tactics, make use of different training methods and relies on a different skill set. How much more needs to be changed before you accept that its no longer karate? *Implying that those who don&#8217;t bow down to the superiority of the Okinawan masters and their bunkai are &#8220;useful idiots&#8221; myth mongering Korean propaganda, a sentiment you&#8217;ve expressed numerous times, is perhaps not the most productive manner by to engage others in a debate.*
> Be Well -F2F



Reread my comments about 'useful idiots', f2f, and what you will see is that it specifically picks out those in the West who echo the Korean nationalist propaganda about _the historical sources of TKD_. It has nothing to do with what has happened in the technique set of TKD in the last forty years.  Just to refresh readers' memories, the passage in question is this:

_...anyone who does that within Taekwondo is almost certainly going to get a line of flak from representatives of the Korean TKD directorate, or what Lenin would have referred to as their 'useful idiots' in the West, that TKD is a purely Korean art, has no substantial debt to Shotokan or other Japanese karate styles, and represents a significantly different fighting system from karate. ...Much of the TKD world, on the other hand&#8212;including the American branch plants of the Korean TKD directorate&#8212;are engaged in promoting the same revisionist legendary fantasies (as per the bit of fraudulent mythmongering here) that began with General Choi...._​
There are three conditions, as per my color coding, and the people I'm referring to are the ones who insist on all three conditions without the slightest effort to support them, as per the site given as the illustration. Follow that link, and this is what you will read:

*Taekwondo is purely Korean in origin as the beginnings of true Korean culture are believed to have developed in 2332 B.C. with the establishment of the Ancient Korean State. *​
The issue is where TKD came from, what its combat roots are, and what that says about the underlying unity of the two sets of fighting systems. Why conflate this issue with that of bunkai, or the post-Kwan evolution of TKD, or anything else, other than the color-coded three conditions that are specified in my OP?? I was specifically talking about 'revisionist legendary fantasies', as per the site I linked to. In my OP, isn't it clear that I was talking about the sources in O/J martial arts for the MA that became TKD, accepted with no question by TSDists but denied by the Korean orgs and their Western apologists? Who is asking anyone to bow to the superiority of anyone? The 'Western apologists' in question, who I was referring to as the analogue of Lenin's useful idiots, do _three particular things_, the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, none of which has anything to do with bunkai, or the superiority of one or another system... ah, hell, what's the bloody point, if you aren't going to even read what I've written?!


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## JWLuiza

IcemanSK said:


> I'm in!



Wait,

the Korean's call it Yudo.

I don't see the attack or the issue here though.  The politics behind a MA don't dictate the quality of the practitioners.  Maybe I don't see it since I don't have a dog in this fight.  Overall the argument doesn't really matter except from an academic point of view.


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## foot2face

exile said:


> Reread my comments about 'useful idiots', f2f, and what you will see is that it specifically picks out those in the West who echo the Korean nationalist propaganda about _the historical sources of TKD_. It has nothing to do with what has happened in the technique set of TKD in the last forty years. Just to refresh readers' memories, the passage in question is this:
> 
> _...anyone who does that within Taekwondo is almost certainly going to get a line of flak from representatives of the Korean TKD directorate, or what Lenin would have referred to as their 'useful idiots' in the West, that TKD is a purely Korean art, has no substantial debt to Shotokan or other Japanese karate styles, and represents a significantly different fighting system from karate. ...Much of the TKD world, on the other handincluding the American branch plants of the Korean TKD directorateare engaged in promoting the same revisionist legendary fantasies (as per the bit of fraudulent mythmongering here) that began with General Choi...._​There are three conditions, as per my color coding, and the people I'm referring to are the ones who insist on all three conditions without the slightest effort to support them, as per the site given as the illustration. Follow that link, and this is what you will read:
> 
> *Taekwondo is purely Korean in origin as the beginnings of true Korean culture are believed to have developed in 2332 B.C. with the establishment of the Ancient Korean State. *​The issue is where TKD came from, what its combat roots are, and what that says about the underlying unity of the two sets of fighting systems. Why conflate this issue with that of bunkai, or the post-Kwan evolution of TKD, or anything else, other than the color-coded three conditions that are specified in my OP?? I was specifically talking about 'revisionist legendary fantasies', as per the site I linked to. In my OP, isn't it clear that I was talking about the sources in O/J martial arts for the MA that became TKD, accepted with no question by TSDists but denied by the Korean orgs and their Western apologists? Who is asking anyone to bow to the superiority of anyone? The 'Western apologists' in question, who I was referring to as the analogue of Lenin's useful idiots, do _three particular things_, the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, none of which has anything to do with bunkai, or the superiority of one or another system... ah, hell, what's the bloody point, if you aren't going to even read what I've written?!


No, no Exile, I did read your post. Again, I fear I was unclear and you misunderstood me. My comment was directed more towards your manner of expression rather than the exact content of your post. Your comments sometimes read as being a bit, wellElitist, it just rubs some the wrong way. Many others have a perspective on the art that is completely different than your own and not necessarily an invalid one. Perhaps if you dial it back a bit and soften your approach others who were once hostile to you might become more receptive to your message and we all can have a productive conversation.


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## arnisador

I've always believed it must be that TSD people wanted to distinguish themselves from TKD people in clear and unambiguous ways. If the TKD people admitted that TKD is SHotokan, the TSD people might well be claiming that TSD is directly passed from the Hwa Rang warriors.


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## exile

foot2face said:


> No, no Exile, I did read your post. Again, I fear I was unclear and you misunderstood me. My comment was directed more towards your manner of expression rather than the exact content of your post. Your comments sometimes read as being a bit, well&#8230;Elitist, it just rubs some the wrong way.




Sorry about that, really&#8212;I'm _not_ elitist at all, I don't think, at least in this domain; I claim no superiority for my take, or my school's take, on TKD. My sole concern in all this is the distortion of history that has become almost a disease in many parts of the MA world. I'm not really concerned with how people chose to develop TKD after the Kwan era&#8212;to each their own, and experimentation in different directions is _good_. But what I hate is the way mythology and nationalist sentiment&#8212;no matter how much the latter is justified by conditions under a hated occupation!&#8212;can be combined by self-serving state level agencies to erase the past. I believe very much in the truth of the German epigram that _The past is not past, and the dead are not dead_&#8212;that there is a living aspect to the forces which created something that still persists in the created object, or social arrangement, or whatever. In the case of the MAs, one of those enduring elements is the combat knowledge and experience of those who created the kata and forms which&#8212;spliced, diced and recombined, as they are&#8212;continue to live in discrete subsequences of movements in our hyungs. The strategic and tactical possibilities that were the whole _reason_ those subsequences were constructed by the early karate masters represent a valuable combat resource, if we learn, through bunkai/boonhae, to decode them.

But we both know, I think, that the Japanese, along with their Korean guests, received a relatively quite diluted understanding of the most effective bunkai for the kata that Funakoshi taught, in part because, as Higaki details, the Okinawans did not _want_ to teach the Japanese their best techs. So it is very important to at least understand the original versions of these forms before they were Koreanized, in order to extract what information we can (even if we decide, as you've attempted, to work out practical applications on the basis of these revised forms). Revise away, but don't lose the information that's implicit in them from their original construction. And that's what I see in great danger of happening as the current Korean sport regime emphasizes a more and more spectacle-based, wushu-like interpetation of TKD performance, and as the sparring rules of Olympic TKD become more and more artificial and athletic-spectacular in nature&#8212;a tendency which is accompanied by this propaganda I was pointing out, echoed in that link I posted to _USA Taekwondo_. I find it angering and depressing that American TKD organizations act as cat's-paws for the Korean sport TKD's efforts to deracinate TKD and erase its past by asserting, with no proof or support or rationale&#8212;as though we were a bunch of gullible nitwits eager to line up to buy bridges over major rivers&#8212;the kind of rubbish that that site I linked to is putting out. I don't think that's elitist; it's just a sense that the historical truth is recoverable, and needs to be recovered and preserved, so that we know what happened, whatever we choose to do with that knowledge downstream. I like the kind of TKD I do, but I'd certainly never apply a predicate like _better_ to it (though I definitely believe that certain combat techs in any given situation may well be better than others; but that's not what you're talking about, I don't think).

What I hate are lies on behalf of special interests, which is what things like the text in that site I linked to represents disgustingly clearly. I can at least understand it in the case of the Koreans themselves, though I don't believe anything justifies suppressing the true story of the past to create a more comfortable storyline for the present. But seeing American organizations, and individuals, collaborating in this kind of activity really sickens me. And what I find so striking is that so little of that seems to happen in the TSD community, compared to what happens in the TKD world, and I've just been wondering _why_...


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## Kacey

exile said:


> But seeing American organizations, and individuals, collaborating in this kind of activity really sickens me. *And what I find so striking is that so little of that seems to happen in the TSD community, compared to what happens in the TKD world, and I've just been wondering why...*



Dunno... when I first started in 1987, such things happened, more because people passed down half-remembered tidbits than out of any desire to pass on misinformation.  As I spend more time in TKD, and have more opportunity to talk to my seniors - they don't do that.  My seniors - especially Master Arnold, and his sahbum, GM Lang, but also the seniors, masters, and GMs I have met in multiple other TKD organizations, have a wealth of information about TKD and Korean history that they love to share - in fact, that they desperately _want_ to share, lest it be lost.  From the time I became senior enough to really care, I have been provided with information that is correct to the best of my seniors' steadily increasing knowledge.  

I understand the desire for correct information, and I understand that you are speaking from your experiences - but my experiences are different than yours, and cover a longer time frame with a different group of people.  And, while many of those people knew little about the history of TKD specifically and Korea in general, most did not pass on misinformation - some of the information was distorted by the filters of the people providing it, but none of it was _wrong_.  So when you state, as in the bolded part of your post above, that you see much greater willingness to look for "truth" in TSD than TKD, I have to disagree _from my own experiences_ - and when you speak for the TKD community as if everyone had the same experiences you have, I tend to tune out, because my experience was radically different than yours, and, in fact, in direct opposition to what you see as representing the "group" that is TKD practitioners.


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## exile

Kacey said:


> Dunno... when I first started in 1987, such things happened, more because people passed down half-remembered tidbits than out of any desire to pass on misinformation.  As I spend more time in TKD, and have more opportunity to talk to my seniors - they don't do that.  My seniors - especially Master Arnold, and his sahbum, GM Lang, but also the seniors, masters, and GMs I have met in multiple other TKD organizations, have a wealth of information about TKD and Korean history that they love to share - in fact, that they desperately _want_ to share, lest it be lost.  From the time I became senior enough to really care, I have been provided with information that is correct to the best of my seniors' steadily increasing knowledge.
> 
> I understand the desire for correct information, and I understand that you are speaking from your experiences - but my experiences are different than yours, and cover a longer time frame with a different group of people.  And, while many of those people knew little about the history of TKD specifically and Korea in general, most did not pass on misinformation - some of the information was distorted by the filters of the people providing it, but none of it was _wrong_.  So when you state, as in the bolded part of your post above, that you see much greater willingness to look for "truth" in TSD than TKD, I have to disagree _from my own experiences_ - and when you speak for the TKD community as if everyone had the same experiences you have, I tend to tune out, because my experience was radically different than yours, and, in fact, in direct opposition to what you see as representing the "group" that is TKD practitioners.



Well, I think that the way things work in the ITF-connected TKD world may be quite a bit different than in the WTF/KKW-connected world (where sites such as the one I posted that link to, the TKD America site, are legion). And that also suggests a commonality with TSD: both Hwang Kee and General Choi wound up leaving Korea and disconnecting themselves from the national institutions of Korean martial art/martial sport. And even though Gen. Choi was probably the major initiatior of this official line on lack of relationship between TKD and its karate origins, it could well be that that disconnection from the Korean political scene made a major difference in _both _the TSD and the ITF cultures, in their attitudes toward history. For a long time, the Korean sport TKD world has been taking this same line, the one eched in the TKD America site, for reasons probably deeply connected with their desire to link  a vast martial competition empire with an exclusively Korean identityfor any number of profitable reasons. Neither TSD nor ITF TKD have that incentive, so there wouldn't be anything like the same kind of pressure of the kind I was referring to...


----------



## Kacey

exile said:


> Well, I think that the way things work in the ITF-connected TKD world may be quite a bit different than in the WTF/KKW-connected world (where sites such as the one I posted that link to, the TKD America site, are legion). And that also suggests a commonality with TSD: both Hwang Kee and General Choi wound up leaving Korea and disconnecting themselves from the national institutions of Korean martial art/martial sport. And even though Gen. Choi was probably the major initiatior of this official line on lack of relationship between TKD and its karate origins, it could well be that that disconnection from the Korean political scene made a major difference in _both _the TSD and the ITF cultures, in their attitudes toward history. For a long time, the Korean sport TKD world has been taking this same line, the one eched in the TKD America site, for reasons probably deeply connected with their desire to link  a vast martial competition empire with an exclusively Korean identityfor any number of profitable reasons. Neither TSD nor ITF TKD have that incentive, so there wouldn't be anything like the same kind of pressure of the kind I was referring to...



And yet... quite a few of the seniors I was referring to are _not_ from the ITF; quite a few are.  I really think it has to do with experience and training, more than it does with organizational affiliation.


----------



## newGuy12

Kacey said:


> Dunno... when I first started in 1987, such things happened, more because people passed down half-remembered tidbits than out of any desire to pass on misinformation.  As I spend more time in TKD, and have more opportunity to talk to my seniors - they don't do that.  My seniors - especially Master Arnold, and his sahbum, GM Lang, but also the seniors, masters, and GMs I have met in multiple other TKD organizations, have a wealth of information about TKD and Korean history that they love to share - in fact, that they desperately _want_ to share, lest it be lost.  From the time I became senior enough to really care, I have been provided with information that is correct to the best of my seniors' steadily increasing knowledge.



This is so important!  I can no longer speak with my GM who was there, back in the day of the Kwans!  All of the Old GMs will pass away someday.  Its important to get all of the information possible whenever they speak about it!


----------



## exile

Kacey said:


> And yet... quite a few of the seniors I was referring to are _not_ from the ITF; quite a few are.  I really think it has to do with experience and training, more than it does with organizational affiliation.



This is completely plausible to me; my own sahbumnim, Allen Shirley, and his friend and associate, the late Gm. Darell Trudo; our own Kwan Jang, Master David Hughes, and many, many others, including many of our TKD friends on MT, have been wellsprings of information on the true background of the art. I wasn't really thinking of individuals so much in this context; I've actually had very little disagreement with most of the people who have solid records of achievement in the TKD world. It's not really individuals per se that I was thinking of...

Much more characteristic is the stack of books on TKD on my shelf, many of which, in the obligatory chapter, repeat the 'Three Kingdoms/Hwarang/Ancient TKD/High Kicks to Dismount An Attacker' mantra ad nauseum, ignoring what is by now a huge body of critical literature that systematically dismantles every component of this duplicitous sales pitch. And this includes some very recent books by authors who should certainly know better, who had every chance to see some of the major contributions in that critical literature on TKD history I just mentioned. In 1999, six years after Young's exhaustive study of Taekyon appeared in _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_, and two years after Dakin Burdicks crucial followup piece in the same journal, a major textbook of WTF-style sports TKD, _Taekwondo: the State of the Art_&#8212;it has nine altogether useless pages devoted to 'self-defense' out of nearly three hundred&#8212;spends its whole first chapter, on 'The History of Taekwondo, repeating Three Kingdoms military history as though _any_ connection could be established between modern TKD and whatever the inhabitants of the Korea were doing 2000 years ago in their endless fighting on the peninsula, and full of empty handwaving along the lines of, `There is *every reason* to believe that tae kyon, or soo bahk, flourished during [the Koryo era, around the 10th c. AD]' (my emphasis). This,  without a single line of supporting evidence, or citation, or reference to the many unnamed sources cited in the chapter that supposedly validate this kind of hokum. And this is far from the worst such 'History of Taekwondo' chapter in the books in my collection. The TKD sites on the web are still worse; I've given up counting the number of web pages claiming that TKD has a well-established two-millenia-old history on the peninsula, citing as evidence facts shown by Young, Burdick and Henning as far back as a decade and a half to have no connection whatever to TKD, or anything specifically Korean.  

What's at issue isn't really the veracity of individuals (though there are, of course, many cases where individuals are happy to act as mouthpieces for this sort of historical scamming) so much as the duplicity of organizations and federations. The USA Taekwondo site I posted that link to is just one example, but it exemplifies the worst that's out there, and that's pretty bad, I think&#8212;and very, very widespread.


----------



## mtabone

I am going to start going to the tkd forum and post about Tang Soo Do.... I mean, not a day goes by when I check this page that tkd is mentioned in the Tang Soo Do forum.


----------



## exile

mtabone said:


> I am going to start going to the tkd forum and post about Tang Soo Do.... I mean, not a day goes by when I check this page that tkd is mentioned in the Tang Soo Do forum.



If what you have to say involves a comparison between TKD and TSD, or something about the divergence between the TKD and TSD communities, or some technical relationship, I'm sure you'll find your query welcome, and will get a lot of useful responses.


----------



## DatFlow

When I referr to my art, I referr to it as "Tang Soo Do" and never Karate... I feel Theirs enough of a diffrence to have two diffrent names... and I respect that...


----------



## JWLuiza

DatFlow said:


> When I referr to my art, I referr to it as "Tang Soo Do" and never Karate... I feel Theirs enough of a diffrence to have two diffrent names... and I respect that...



Saying Tang Soo Do is saying karate. They mean the same thing.


----------



## exile

JWLuiza said:


> DatFlow said:
> 
> 
> 
> When I referr to my art, I referr to it as "Tang Soo Do" and never Karate... I feel Theirs enough of a diffrence to have two diffrent names... and I respect that...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Saying Tang Soo Do is saying karate. They mean the same thing.
Click to expand...


JWL is of course correct; and that factthat TSD is one of the Korean translations/transliterations for _kara te_is an important pointer to what I'm getting at in this thread. 

I'm _not_ saying that TSD is the same as Okinawan or Japanese karate, first of all. I'm saying that the origin of the modern Korean striking arts in (Japanese) karate is at this point backed up by such a mass of historical evidence that those who bother to familiarize themselves with it can see, pretty much immediately, that there are no viable alternative sources. (There are plenty of people who _don'_ do that, but who still have very strong opinions on the matter, but that's another story...) The point I'm getting at is that the modern striking KMAs are the Korean development of Japanese karate, just as Shotokan and Shudokan are Japanese developments of Okinawan karate. There's a world of difference between Shuri-te and Shotokan; but there's also no question that a line of historical development links them. That's all I'm talking about. TSD people do not deny the origins of their art in karate to nearly the same degree that TKD people do; if you want an example, look at the home page of the major US Korean-affiliated TKD organization here. This kind of charlatanry, with major implicit lies about the origin of TKD, seems to me to be unthinkable in TSD, and I'm curious as to why... that's my sole concern here.


----------



## JWLuiza

exile said:


> JWL is of course correct; and that factthat TSD is one of the Korean translations/transliterations for _kara te_is an important pointer to what I'm getting at in this thread.
> 
> This kind of charlatanry, with major implicit lies about the origin of TKD, seems to me to be unthinkable in TSD, and I'm curious as to why... that's my sole concern here.


 
Actually Exile, I think the foot soldier in TSD is more educated now, but if you check the websites you see one of two flavors of history...  (Sadly, hours gives the whole 2000 year history.... yuck)

1.  Complete Propaganda
2.  Propaganda and some varying degree of truth along side it, ranging from complete openess to vauge references to the Japanese occupation.

Oh and a 3rd option:
Tang Soo Do history starts with the GM of the organization 

But overall, I think we just don't care that much.  In fact, I WOULD lump my training into karate style training.  I think SBD MDK practitioners are starting a transition to a non-karate or less-karate like training.  I know my TSD is closer to Karate than Kung Fu or any other MA.  But I guess I can shut up now since you and I pretty much agree on KMAs....


----------



## exile

JWLuiza said:


> But overall, I think we just don't care that much.



Which is interesting in itself, eh?



JWLuiza said:


> In fact, I WOULD lump my training into karate style training.  I think SBD MDK practitioners are starting a transition to a non-karate or less-karate like training.



So I've heard. I understand that there's a movement afoot in the SBD MDK to suppress the Pinans, as the Korean TKD directorate did, to its eternal discredit...



JWLuiza said:


> I know my TSD is closer to Karate than Kung Fu or any other MA.  But I guess I can shut up now since you and I pretty much agree on KMAs....



But wait, _that's _no reason to shut up!


----------



## JWLuiza

exile said:


> So I've heard. I understand that there's a movement afoot in the SBD MDK to suppress the Pinans, as the Korean TKD directorate did, to its eternal discredit...


 
Not so much to supress the Pinans, but to focus more on the Chil Sun and Yuk Rho forms.  I actually don't have much issue with this. Hwang Kee KJN and H.C. Hwang KJN have a vision of what they want their art to look like and are actively changing it.  They have a reason behind their madness.  The only problem I have is that the videos I've seen show kind of robotic standardization to their hyeong, but videos of H.C. Hwang KJN are just FANTASTIC.  I would love to work with some of the more technically proficient SBD MDK members.

The Mi Guk Kwan has an even distribution of the Chil SUn, Yuk Rho, and Classic TSD hyung in their curriculum and use them to attend to different aspects of movement and training.





> But wait, _that's _no reason to shut up!


 
I guess so.  Who else can I talk martial arts with on a Friday night?


----------



## exile

JWLuiza said:


> Not so much to supress the Pinans, but to focus more on the *Chil Sun and Yuk Rho *forms.  I actually don't have much issue with this. Hwang Kee KJN and H.C. Hwang KJN have a vision of what they want their art to look like and are actively changing it.  They have a reason behind their madness.  The only problem I have is that the videos I've seen show kind of robotic standardization to their hyeong, but videos of H.C. Hwang KJN are just FANTASTIC.  I would love to work with some of the more technically proficient SBD MDK members.


 
Can you say something about those two forms, JWLwhere they com from, that sort of thing?



JWLuiza said:


> The Mi Guk Kwan has an even distribution of the Chil SUn, Yuk Rho, and Classic TSD hyung in their curriculum and use them to attend to different aspects of movement and training.



I've no problem at all with people adding to their hyung syllabus (though my own feeling is that a few in depth is way better than a superficial two dozen or so); but it's the excision of traditional forms, particularly those which, like the Pinans, clearly show the O/J footprints of the technique set, that  really bothers me. 




JWLuiza said:


> I guess so.  Who else can I talk martial arts with on a Friday night?



Hey, what else are Friday nights _for?!_ :drinky: :lol:


----------



## tellner

I think what happened was that martial arts stopped being rare and exotic. At first there really wasn't much of a frame of reference. People groped along as best they could and believed what they were told because it was all they knew. This fed into the nation-building and mythologizing urges of a lot of countries. Add in the well-documented effects of high-altitude cosmic radiation on obis - get on a plane in Tokyo with a brown belt, emerge at LAX with a seventh degree black one  - and there's room for all sorts of strange ideas to take root.

As more people in the West took up martial arts they became more sophisticated consumers and learned how to judge rather than uncritically accept everything they were told as Revealed Wisdom(tm). When the scholars got a hold of it the jig was really up. Increased travel and better communications exposed the fairy tales, and documents made their way into more hands. A generation of anthropology, history and Asian studies grad students desperate for publications dug in. Most of all, access to information increased. It has become easier to go and see for oneself or to meet people from the culture in question in one's own country. It's harder to hide the contradictions and fabrications.

This isn't Korea bashing. You can see exactly the same thing almost anywhere you look. Let's take Silat just as a not at all random example. One teacher who lives a couple hundred miles from here claimed to be a master of a certain style. Nobody really questioned him until recently. Then the people back in Indonesia who have been practicing the system for quite a while said "His teacher? That was supposed to be my father. Dad never heard of the guy, and the styles look absolutely nothing alike." 

Others claimed to be the only Keepers of the Flame of a certain system and had some very specific stories about which ethnic group it came from. Now that more people have gone to the area they came from and seen the style in context and practiced by lots of other people the original claims turn out to be, well, not true. 

A member of the same group claims that when the concentration camp he was in was liberated from the Japanese the general in charge of the liberation was a certain well-known martial artist. He swore it up one side and down the other. Comes the research by a number of veteran's groups, and it turns out the "general" completely fabricated his military history. The stories that arise out of that must be false as well. Nobody would have known any better if it hadn't been for increased contact between the cultures and interchange between people with disparate interests that happen to intersect in significant places.

There was a great quote from a sci-fi book to the effect that "Bad communications deter theft. Good communications encourage theft. Perfect communications prevent theft." The same holds true for self-serving falsehoods. It doesn't mean people won't try. The ratio of clumsy liars in any human population has always been approximately one per mouth. It does mean that it's harder to succeed, and their continued credibility relies more heavily on getting peoples' egos thoroughly invested in the stories than on simple ignorance.


----------



## exile

tellner said:


> I think what happened was that martial arts stopped being rare and exotic. At first there really wasn't much of a frame of reference. People groped along as best they could and believed what they were told because it was all they knew. This fed into the nation-building and mythologizing urges of a lot of countries. Add in the well-documented effects of high-altitude cosmic radiation on obis - get on a plane in Tokyo with a brown belt, emerge at LAX with a seventh degree black one  - and there's room for all sorts of strange ideas to take root.
> 
> As more people in the West took up martial arts they became more sophisticated consumers and learned how to judge rather than uncritically accept everything they were told as Revealed Wisdom(tm). When the scholars got a hold of it the jig was really up. Increased travel and better communications exposed the fairy tales, and documents made their way into more hands. A generation of anthropology, history and Asian studies grad students desperate for publications dug in. Most of all, access to information increased. It has become easier to go and see for oneself or to meet people from the culture in question in one's own country. It's harder to hide the contradictions and fabrications.
> 
> This isn't Korea bashing. You can see exactly the same thing almost anywhere you look. Let's take Silat just as a not at all random example. One teacher who lives a couple hundred miles from here claimed to be a master of a certain style. Nobody really questioned him until recently. Then the people back in Indonesia who have been practicing the system for quite a while said "His teacher? That was supposed to be my father. Dad never heard of the guy, and the styles look absolutely nothing alike."
> 
> Others claimed to be the only Keepers of the Flame of a certain system and had some very specific stories about which ethnic group it came from. Now that more people have gone to the area they came from and seen the style in context and practiced by lots of other people the original claims turn out to be, well, not true.
> 
> A member of the same group claims that when the concentration camp he was in was liberated from the Japanese the general in charge of the liberation was a certain well-known martial artist. He swore it up one side and down the other. Comes the research by a number of veteran's groups, and it turns out the "general" completely fabricated his military history. The stories that arise out of that must be false as well. Nobody would have known any better if it hadn't been for increased contact between the cultures and interchange between people with disparate interests that happen to intersect in significant places.
> 
> There was a great quote from a sci-fi book to the effect that "Bad communications deter theft. Good communications encourage theft. Perfect communications prevent theft." The same holds true for self-serving falsehoods. It doesn't mean people won't try. The ratio of clumsy liars in any human population has always been approximately one per mouth. *It does mean that it's harder to succeed, and their continued credibility relies more heavily on getting peoples' egos thoroughly invested in the stories than on simple ignorance.*



A lot of good points in this post, but the thing I've bolded is I think the absolutely crucial bit. I can't for the life of me figure out what drives that investment, but wherever it comes from, I think you're dead right...


----------



## mtabone

Quote:
Originally Posted by *JWLuiza* 

 
_The Mi Guk Kwan has an even distribution of the Chil SUn, Yuk Rho, and Classic TSD hyung in their curriculum and use them to attend to different aspects of movement and training._




exile said:


> I've no problem at all with people adding to their hyung syllabus (though my own feeling is that a few in depth is way better than a superficial two dozen or so); but it's the excision of traditional forms, particularly those which, like the Pinans, clearly show the O/J footprints of the technique set, that really bothers me.


 
Being a Mi Guk Kwan member I understand fully the intent of having so many hyungs and techniques. It is one of the factors that makes Mi Guk Kwan a unique and living art, separating it from other Tang Soo Do kwans (I am not disparaging other Kwans, just speaking about the differences, I dont want people posting about how I put down every other org in the world..)

In the Mi Guk Kwan we learn all the Classical/Traditional Hyung found in Tang Soo Do. We also practice the Chil Sung and Yuk Rho Hyungs. The idea is to build the Fire energy of hard external type forms, (bassai for example) water energy forms of soft internal type (nihanji) and the balance of both hard and soft energies (chil sung). As one trains in the Mi Guk Kwan the forms go from hard, to hard/soft, to soft. All belts, and dan ranks follow this model, even with the weapons, starting at knife for 1st dan, bo for 2nd, Korean sword for 3rd, Chinese broad sword for 4th, Chinese spear form for 5th, Tai Chi sword for 6th. 

Now I agree, all in all tons of forms. And I also agree that it would be to much in a modern day to examine all these forms, pick them apart, and learn EVERY detail from every single move (But I have seen and know that you can learn all these hyungs and still perform them all masterfully regardless of number but they are separate issues)
The cool thing I believe is the ability of a Mi Guk Kwan stylist to pick different hyungs that resonate with them and work those hyungs personally. I love Nihanji (spelling might be a little off, you know, Romanization) and I also love Chil Sung. Now I might like Chil Sung Yuk Rho so I might spend years pulling that form apart and learning every application and it would effect my personal evolution as a martial artist. Now I am not the greatest with Wan Shu (characterized by the sparrow) I need to work on being lighter. So I train this form a lot, working on the other side of aspect I need to improve on. So while I might train forms I love a lot, and forms I need to work on a lot, I still know the other forms that come around, because my students might choose to pick them, for they might be better suited to their evolution

Now, you can not pick and choose the forms you learn, you have to learn them all. But yes, you can pick and choose the forms you decide you want to personal master beyond the normal scope. I believe this is great for the diverse amount of people that train in martial arts to have something they can evolve into and with.

For instance for me personally, I dont like bo (staff). I know the forms, but it is just not a weapon for me. I have students that love it. I love the Korean sword, so I gravitate to that. I am learning now the Chinese broad sword, and while it is kind of cool and I know it, it is not my favorite thing in the world. I dont like the single knife but love the double knife in our syllabus. This is not to say I dont find value in the forms that are not my favorite, just that they probably wont shape me as much as the forms I train with. And if you saw my Chinese broad sword form, while I do the characteristics and movements of the form correct, you can see some of my Korean sword popping through. 

You can see different aspects in people training based on what hyungs/drills/other martial activities they gravitate to. I think thats pretty cool.:ubercool:

TANG SOO!!!

MTabone


----------



## Brian R. VanCise

tellner said:


> I think what happened was that martial arts stopped being rare and exotic. At first there really wasn't much of a frame of reference. People groped along as best they could and believed what they were told because it was all they knew. This fed into the nation-building and mythologizing urges of a lot of countries. Add in the well-documented effects of high-altitude cosmic radiation on obis - get on a plane in Tokyo with a brown belt, emerge at LAX with a seventh degree black one  - and there's room for all sorts of strange ideas to take root.
> 
> As more people in the West took up martial arts they became more sophisticated consumers and learned how to judge rather than uncritically accept everything they were told as Revealed Wisdom(tm). When the scholars got a hold of it the jig was really up. Increased travel and better communications exposed the fairy tales, and documents made their way into more hands. A generation of anthropology, history and Asian studies grad students desperate for publications dug in. Most of all, access to information increased. It has become easier to go and see for oneself or to meet people from the culture in question in one's own country. It's harder to hide the contradictions and fabrications.
> 
> This isn't Korea bashing. You can see exactly the same thing almost anywhere you look. Let's take Silat just as a not at all random example. One teacher who lives a couple hundred miles from here claimed to be a master of a certain style. Nobody really questioned him until recently. Then the people back in Indonesia who have been practicing the system for quite a while said "His teacher? That was supposed to be my father. Dad never heard of the guy, and the styles look absolutely nothing alike."
> 
> Others claimed to be the only Keepers of the Flame of a certain system and had some very specific stories about which ethnic group it came from. Now that more people have gone to the area they came from and seen the style in context and practiced by lots of other people the original claims turn out to be, well, not true.
> 
> A member of the same group claims that when the concentration camp he was in was liberated from the Japanese the general in charge of the liberation was a certain well-known martial artist. He swore it up one side and down the other. Comes the research by a number of veteran's groups, and it turns out the "general" completely fabricated his military history. The stories that arise out of that must be false as well. Nobody would have known any better if it hadn't been for increased contact between the cultures and interchange between people with disparate interests that happen to intersect in significant places.
> 
> There was a great quote from a sci-fi book to the effect that "Bad communications deter theft. Good communications encourage theft. Perfect communications prevent theft." The same holds true for self-serving falsehoods. It doesn't mean people won't try. The ratio of clumsy liars in any human population has always been approximately one per mouth. It does mean that it's harder to succeed, and their continued credibility relies more heavily on getting peoples' egos thoroughly invested in the stories than on simple ignorance.


 
Tellner better communications certainly has helped us to understand what is real and who trained with who. (excellent post)


----------



## Makalakumu

Hwang Kee himself told us that Tang Soo Do was a generic term for martial arts.  

He said that when the first person picked up a rock and defended himself against an attacker, that was TSD.  When somebody shaped a spear and defended himself, that was TSD.  When somebody constructed a tank and defended his country, that was TSD.  I am paraphrasing this quote, because the book isn't in front of me, but I think the point is preserved.

TSD is just not as involved in the Korean identity as is TKD.  

I could expound upon this point, but I feel several digressions building within me.  This, however, is something that many TSD people still need to learn.  Anyone who is still asking the question "What is TSD?" or even worse, "What is the *REAL* TSD?" is missing Hwang Kee's point.

Hell, I have been guilty of this in the past.  Change is difficult.  Ryu pa anyone?


----------



## Ninjamom

Bumping exile's question from a few posts back, could someone please proivide more information on the *yuk rho* fporms, including where they came from, what they entail, and maybe some links to vids?

I was just reading in the MYDTJ again, and the long-fist derived fist techniques were broken into 6 paths (yuk rho) and 10 levels.  Just looking for any possible/meaningful connection.


----------



## Makalakumu

The short of it is that the Chil Sung and Yungno forms were created by Hwang Kee based off of his interpretations of various CMA and MYDTJ.  These forms are considered the essence of SBD is supposed to be.


----------



## MBuzzy

exile said:


> Can you say something about those two forms, JWLwhere they com from, that sort of thing?


 


Ninjamom said:


> Bumping exile's question from a few posts back, could someone please proivide more information on the *yuk rho* fporms, including where they came from, what they entail, and maybe some links to vids?
> 
> I was just reading in the MYDTJ again, and the long-fist derived fist techniques were broken into 6 paths (yuk rho) and 10 levels. Just looking for any possible/meaningful connection.


 
I can only give my limited understanding, but here is what I know.

Both the Chil Sung and Yuk Ro forms were created by Hwang Kee, I believe in the 70s.  As for why they were created, I have heard different things.  There is the ever present rumor that the Federation is trying to de-emphasize the japanese influence.  There is the fact that Hwang Kee was trying to "Koreanize" Soo Bahk Do more, through the creation of Korean only forms.  There is the story that he was trying to bring his chinese training in more to "soften" the art.  Could be any of these or a combination.

Both sets of forms are characterized by long, chinese stances.  They have a contrast between fast and slow, hard and soft movements.  Both also have some unique movements, not really seen in other forms.

This is where I personally feel that the two differ.  Yuk Ro seems to me to be a lot more original.  With a lot of movements created specifically for those forms - and believe it or not, some movements that I can actually see in the MDTJ.  The Chil Sung Forms, though, tend to be more conglomerations of other forms.  Though they have some of their own movements, they seem to just be textbooks of the pyahng ahns and more advanced hyung.  For example, both Chil Sung Il and Ee are in the Kicho pattern.  Ee is fairly simply in execution, but has many more movements than the Kichos and is much more advanced.  Chil Sung Il does have some unique movements which are hard to interpret.  Whereas Chil Sung Sam seem to be practically a textbook of Ship Soo, Pyahn Ahn Sa Dan, and Bassai.

I asked about the meaning of the two forms names while I was in Korea.  I got the answer that Yuk Ro means "A man walking on a path."  Chil Sung means "Seven stars."  And I have also heard the story that Hwang Kee's mother dreamt of 7 stars when he was born or something along those lines.

I personally never seen the pyahng ahn forms being eliminated from the Soo Bahk Do curriculum.  There will always be talk of it and we will probably continue to soften the style, but those hyung are too important to get rid of completely - even if all of their movements are in the Chil Sungs somewhere!


----------



## MBuzzy

upnorthkyosa said:


> The short of it is that the Chil Sung and Yungno forms were created by Hwang Kee based off of his interpretations of various CMA and MYDTJ. These forms are considered the essence of SBD is supposed to be.


 
Excellent point - the story is that both sets of forms were "translated" from the MDTJ....but as I'm sure you know, they are definately not in there.  He may have taken some of the movements described and reformulated them into new forms, but there are not 13 forms in the Kwon Bup Bo chapter.  

Most of the chinese influence came from HK's time working on the Chinese railroad and learning the southern chinese styles.


----------



## MBuzzy

As for videos, here's what I can find.  I'm not sure if some of these are the Federation interpretations as I can see some differences....although they could just be school differences.  I found all of the Chils Sungs, except 3, which is my favorite.  Although, I only found 1 of the Yuk Rhos...they seem to be MUCH harder to find.  Even at competitions, not too many people do those forms.  Since only the first 3 are published anywhere and they aren't as popular as the Chil Sungs, they are hard to come by.

Yuk Rho Cho Dan (Du Mun)




 
Chil Sung Il Lo (One of our own members, hopefully he doesn't mind the link - EXCELLENT Performance, Joel)




 
Chil Sung Ee Lo




 
Chil Sung Sa Lo




 
Chil Sung Oh Lo




 
Chil Sung Yuk Lo




 
Chil Sung Chil Lo


----------



## MBuzzy

Ruk Rho Sam Dan - Po Wol




 
Yuk Rho Sa Dan - Yang Pyun




 

Here's two more.....Each of the Yuk Rho forms has another name.  I listed them in another post somewhere on here, but I can't seem to find it again.  As you can see, Sam Dan and Sa Dan are Po Wol and Yang Pyun respectively.  Cho Dan is Du Mun, Ee Dan is Joong Jul, and I forget the last two.


----------



## exile

Ninjamom said:


> Bumping exile's question from a few posts back, could someone please proivide more information on the *yuk rho* fporms, including where they came from, what they entail, and maybe some links to vids?
> 
> I was just reading in the MYDTJ again, and the long-fist derived fist techniques were broken into 6 paths (yuk rho) and 10 levels.  Just looking for any possible/meaningful connection.



Ah, that makes sense. Given how well read HK was in the MYDTJ, it would make sense for him to use nomenclature from that manual for his own form creations.... nice observation, NjM!



upnorthkyosa said:


> The short of it is that the Chil Sung and Yungno forms were created by Hwang Kee based off of his interpretations of various CMA and MYDTJ.  These forms are considered the essence of SBD is supposed to be.



Thanks, UpN! And thanks, Craig, for posting those links!



MBuzzy said:


> I can only give my limited understanding, but here is what I know.
> 
> Both the Chil Sung and Yuk Ro forms were created by Hwang Kee, I believe in the 70s.  As for why they were created, I have heard different things.  There is the ever present rumor that the Federation is trying to de-emphasize the japanese influence.  There is the fact that Hwang Kee was trying to "Koreanize" Soo Bahk Do more, through the creation of Korean only forms.  There is the story that he was trying to bring his chinese training in more to "soften" the art.  Could be any of these or a combination.
> 
> Both sets of forms are characterized by long, chinese stances.  They have a contrast between fast and slow, hard and soft movements.  Both also have some unique movements, not really seen in other forms.
> 
> This is where I personally feel that the two differ.  Yuk Ro seems to me to be a lot more original.  With a lot of movements created specifically for those forms - and believe it or not, some movements that I can actually see in the MDTJ.  The Chil Sung Forms, though, tend to be more conglomerations of other forms.  Though they have some of their own movements, they seem to just be textbooks of the pyahng ahns and more advanced hyung.  For example, both Chil Sung Il and Ee are in the Kicho pattern.  Ee is fairly simply in execution, but has many more movements than the Kichos and is much more advanced.  Chil Sung Il does have some unique movements which are hard to interpret.  Whereas Chil Sung Sam seem to be practically a textbook of Ship Soo, Pyahn Ahn Sa Dan, and Bassai.
> 
> I asked about the meaning of the two forms names while I was in Korea.  I got the answer that Yuk Ro means "A man walking on a path."  Chil Sung means "Seven stars."  And I have also heard the story that Hwang Kee's mother dreamt of 7 stars when he was born or something along those lines.
> 
> I personally never seen the pyahng ahn forms being eliminated from the Soo Bahk Do curriculum.  There will always be talk of it and we will probably continue to soften the style, but those hyung are too important to get rid of completely - even if all of their movements are in the Chil Sungs somewhere!



Very nice summary of the state of knowledge on these forms&#8212;much appreciated! :asian:


----------



## tellner

upnorthkyosa said:


> Hwang Kee himself told us that Tang Soo Do was a generic term for martial arts.
> 
> He said that when the first person picked up a rock and defended himself against an attacker, that was TSD.  When somebody shaped a spear and defended himself, that was TSD.  When somebody constructed a tank and defended his country, that was TSD.  I am paraphrasing this quote, because the book isn't in front of me, but I think the point is preserved.



That's a little disingenuous on his part. First, consider what the words "Tang Soo Do" translate to. Compare it to what "Kara Te Do" meant before it was made politically correct for the Japanese audience. 

But what it does is make a vague connection to Ancient Mysteries without strictly lying. Pinocchio could say "The roots of Tang Soo Do are millions of years old" without his nose getting longer. It's easy to say "All fighting is TSD, so that  really kewl move is TSD." But one can still evade any particular inconvenient question about the recent past.

It's like the eighteen year old cat who is sitting next to me right now. It doesn't wash.


----------



## MBuzzy

MBuzzy said:


> I can only give my limited understanding, but here is what I know.
> 
> Both the Chil Sung and Yuk Ro forms were created by Hwang Kee, I believe in the 70s. As for why they were created, I have heard different things. There is the ever present rumor that the Federation is trying to de-emphasize the japanese influence. There is the fact that Hwang Kee was trying to "Koreanize" Soo Bahk Do more, through the creation of Korean only forms. There is the story that he was trying to bring his chinese training in more to "soften" the art. Could be any of these or a combination.
> 
> Both sets of forms are characterized by long, chinese stances. They have a contrast between fast and slow, hard and soft movements. Both also have some unique movements, not really seen in other forms.
> 
> This is where I personally feel that the two differ. Yuk Ro seems to me to be a lot more original. With a lot of movements created specifically for those forms - and believe it or not, some movements that I can actually see in the MDTJ. The Chil Sung Forms, though, tend to be more conglomerations of other forms. Though they have some of their own movements, they seem to just be textbooks of the pyahng ahns and more advanced hyung. For example, both Chil Sung Il and Ee are in the Kicho pattern. Ee is fairly simply in execution, but has many more movements than the Kichos and is much more advanced. Chil Sung Il does have some unique movements which are hard to interpret. Whereas Chil Sung Sam seem to be practically a textbook of Ship Soo, Pyahn Ahn Sa Dan, and Bassai.
> 
> I asked about the meaning of the two forms names while I was in Korea. I got the answer that Yuk Ro means "A man walking on a path." Chil Sung means "Seven stars." And I have also heard the story that Hwang Kee's mother dreamt of 7 stars when he was born or something along those lines.
> 
> I personally never seen the pyahng ahn forms being eliminated from the Soo Bahk Do curriculum. There will always be talk of it and we will probably continue to soften the style, but those hyung are too important to get rid of completely - even if all of their movements are in the Chil Sungs somewhere!


 
Correction - Chil Sungs were created in 1952...just not made very public until later.  No clue on the timing of the Yuk Ros

And if ANYONE has similar information on the Ship Dan Kum Hyung...I'd give away large portions of my anatomy to get such information....especially videos.


----------



## MBuzzy

tellner said:


> That's a little disingenuous on his part. First, consider what the words "Tang Soo Do" translate to. Compare it to what "Kara Te Do" meant before it was made politically correct for the Japanese audience.
> 
> But what it does is make a vague connection to Ancient Mysteries without strictly lying. Pinocchio could say "The roots of Tang Soo Do are millions of years old" without his nose getting longer. It's easy to say "All fighting is TSD, so that really kewl move is TSD." But one can still evade any particular inconvenient question about the recent past.
> 
> It's like the eighteen year old cat who is sitting next to me right now. It doesn't wash.


 
From reading the book - I really don't get that impression at all.  I mean, it would be easy to put it in those terms, but my interpretation is that GM Hwang Kee was more alluding to the fact that TSD is about combat and getting at what is effective.  Granted - many will argue that we've strayed pretty far from that, but I think that the original idea was pretty idealistic.  He was talking about all martial arts being the same at their base and that Tang Soo Do was simple a generic term for a fighting method.  It is just that knowing the history and where we've gone since the book was written, it colors our interpretation.

Of course...I have a tendancy to read into things....


----------



## tkd1964

Exile, I don't know what you mean when you say it started with Gen. Choi. He has always mentioned the Japanese roots and went so far as to include the patterns in his first book. 

Mike


----------



## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Exile, I don't know what you mean when you say it started with Gen. Choi. He has always mentioned the Japanese roots and went so far as to include the patterns in his first book.
> 
> Mike



In his last interview in _Combat_ magazine in the 1990s, Gen. Choi maintained explcitly that TKD owed _nothing_ to karate. Check out the documentation in Stuart Anslow's book on the Ch'ang Hong patterns. And check out Gm. Kim Pyung-Soo's account of how Choi changed his story on the provenance of TKD, in his interview with Rob McLain in the January _Black Belt_ magazine (or, equivalently, in the MartialTalk magazine version of that interview here), or his insistence on the role of a supposedly completely indigenous 'taekyon' in his own MA training, based on instruction from a supposedly famous calligrapher and instructor whose existence there is no record of, and which the Taekyon Research Association itself is dubious about (see Capener and Robert Young's comprehensive 1993 _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_ article, 'The history and development of _taekyon_' for documentation). 

_That's_ what I mean.


----------



## arnisador

exile said:


> In his last interview in _Combat_ magazine in the 1990s, Gen. Choi maintained explcitly that TKD owed _nothing_ to karate.



I didn't know he had changed his story so completely. Was this due to political pressure placed on him, or did it come from within?


----------



## tellner

arnisador said:


> I didn't know he had changed his story so completely. Was this due to political pressure placed on him, or did it come from within?



Who can tell for sure? Once you decide it's alright to tell a little lie because it makes you feel good about yourself the bigger ones get easier. Pretty soon you start believing them. Maybe the Korean government was telling most of the lies. Maybe Choi started the pattern. Maybe it was his former associates. It really doesn't matter all that much. 

It's a shame either way. Eventually lies get exposed. When they do people stop trusting you. Whatever good you did is tainted. See Elliot Spitzer for a recent not-terribly-random example.


----------



## exile

tellner said:


> arnisador said:
> 
> 
> 
> I didn't know he had changed his story so completely. Was this due to political pressure placed on him, or did it come from within?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Who can tell for sure? Once you decide it's alright to tell a little lie because it makes you feel good about yourself the bigger ones get easier. Pretty soon you start believing them. Maybe the Korean government was telling most of the lies. Maybe Choi started the pattern. Maybe it was his former associates. It really doesn't matter all that much.
> 
> It's a shame either way. Eventually lies get exposed. When they do people stop trusting you. Whatever good you did is tainted. See Elliot Spitzer for a recent not-terribly-random example.
Click to expand...


Yeah, it's really hard to say, given the unfathomly murky political history of TKD (which makes its technical history look like a completely transparent tropical lagoon by comparison ) But remember, Gen. Choi was the dominant _political_ force in TKD between the Korean War and the end of the Park military dictatorship; if there was pressure being supplied, I suspect he was on the initiating end rather than the receiving end. He spent time in a Japanese prison for his anti-occupation activities, and his life was probably in real danger, and in spite of the hosility engendered towards him in Korea by his trip to the North, he strikes me as a genuine Korean patriot. Given the nature of his actions in the Korean War epoch to further the Oh Do Kwan at the expense of its competitors Kwans, as Gm. Kim reports in the sources I mentioned, his revisionist management of TKD history seems almost incidental... and there were probably plenty of others in Korea who were in sympathy with his anti-Japanese attitudes in connection with the MAs. So it's probably a bit of this and a bit of that....


----------



## Kacey

exile said:


> Yeah, it's really hard to say, given the unfathomly murky political history of TKD (which makes its technical history look like a completely transparent tropical lagoon by comparison ) But remember, Gen. Choi was the dominant _political_ force in TKD between the Korean War and the end of the Park military dictatorship; if there was pressure being supplied, I suspect he was on the initiating end rather than the receiving end. He spent time in a Japanese prison for his anti-occupation, and his life was probably in real danger, and in spite of the hosility engendered towards him in Korea by his trip to the North, he strikes me as a genuine Korean patriot. Given the nature of his actions in the Korean War epoch to further the Oh Do Kwan at the expense of its competitors Kwans, as Gm. Kim reports in the sources I mentioned, his revisionist management of TKD history seems almost incidental... and there were probably plenty of others in Korea who were in sympathy with his anti-Japanese attitudes in connection with the MAs. So it's probably a bit of this and a bit of that....


Toward the end of his life, especially after he was diagnosed with the stomach cancer than ultimately killed him, Gen. Choi expressed a great deal of desire to die and be buried in his homeland, where he was born.  This required getting the North Korean government to allow him to return without being imprisoned.  Did that affect what he expressed about his personal experiences?  It certainly could have.  Did it?  Only he could have known for sure, and perhaps members of his family - and they are not talking, nor can I blame them.  Nor would he be the first person to make such a choice.


----------



## exile

Kacey said:


> Toward the end of his life, especially after he was diagnosed with the stomach cancer than ultimately killed him, Gen. Choi expressed a great deal of desire to die and be buried in his homeland, where he was born.  This required getting the North Korean government to allow him to return without being imprisoned.  Did that affect what he expressed about his personal experiences?  It certainly could have.  Did it?  Only he could have known for sure, and perhaps members of his family - and they are not talking, nor can I blame them.  Nor would he be the first person to make such a choice.



See, that's the thing&#8212;there are all these wrinkles and personal crises that we don't necessarily know about that have significant impact on people's attitudes and choices. It's the same thing with the rest of us, but when you're a very high profile public figure, those actions and choices are greatly amplified, and people wind up attributing motive and placing blame where they really don't have the knowledge, or the moral authority, to do so. I've never understood the ferocity with which certain _American_ MAists attack Gen. Choi's visit to the North, with all the nasty insinuations that he was in sympathy with the pathological government there. There's not the slightest shred of evidence for that. For what I know about the history, he really believed that this could be the same kind of initiative as the famous visit of a group of top American table-tennis players to China was, in 1971, which paved the way for Nixon's visit to China.

The other thing I don't understand is the righteous indignation (again, from _American_ MAists) that I've encountered when I've noted the discrepancies others have discovered in Gen. Choi's statements about the history of TKD ('how could you/those awful people say such things about such an obviously honorable man?', etc. etc. ad nauseum). Tellner's right: the truth will catch up with you&#8212;no way you can avoid it. But our conception of truth and the conception of truth in much of Asian society are not the same: ours comes laden with a lot of heavy ethical baggage, baggage we can afford because of our comparatively _very_ easy lifestyles and standards of living. Karel Van Wolferen, in his great book _The Enigma of Japanese Power_, makes the point that norms of courtesy in Japanese society entail honoring the 'official story' (_tatemae_) regardless of one's _honne_ (personal understanding of the truth); the two are allowed to coexist side by side, so to speak (Plato's 'noble lie' is a similar idea: the official story that _should_ be the truth, because it's more uplifting or edifying than reality, and therefore should be treated as the truth in spite of that reality). I've talked to a number of our Korean students about this, and the comment you hear from all of them, without exception is that things are exactly the same in their own cultures, and that they have trouble explaining this to _us_. These ideas are tied into norms of honor and deference (interestingly, both the  Japanese and Korean languages have an extensive system of honorific-marking that enters into the syntax in important ways), and the idea that a leading patriotic figure would change his story to reflect better&#8212;in his own view, at least&#8212;on the nation is not in the least surprising, against that cultural background.


----------



## Sukerkin

Just a quick comment, given my lack of any credentials in the Korean MA's, to augment what Rob had to say about the radically different social 'rules' that define accepted 'history' in the East.

We Westerner's pride ourselves on knowing our own minds and speaking out if officialdom makes claims we know not to be true.  A Japanese would be much more bound by the central rules of society to abide by the 'party line' whatever personal feelings or knowledge said.

It's one of those elements that makes the study of Japanese history so difficult and it still persists today.


----------



## Steel Tiger

MBuzzy said:


> Both sets of forms are characterized by long, chinese stances. They have a contrast between fast and slow, hard and soft movements. Both also have some unique movements, not really seen in other forms.
> 
> I asked about the meaning of the two forms names while I was in Korea. I got the answer that Yuk Ro means "A man walking on a path." Chil Sung means "Seven stars." And I have also heard the story that Hwang Kee's mother dreamt of 7 stars when he was born or something along those lines.


 
I found the reference to Hwang Kee's Chinese training interesting especially in light of the reference to Seven Stars.  There is a northern style called Seven Stars Praying Mantis and I wondered if the inspiration might have come from there.  

I've just had another look at some of the videos you posted and compared them with some mantis fist and the similarity is quite striking.  Take a look at this example:





 
Just thought I would offer my technical observations.


----------



## tkd1964

exile said:


> In his last interview in _Combat_ magazine in the 1990s, Gen. Choi maintained explcitly that TKD owed _nothing_ to karate. Check out the documentation in Stuart Anslow's book on the Ch'ang Hong patterns. And check out Gm. Kim Pyung-Soo's account of how Choi changed his story on the provenance of TKD, in his interview with Rob McLain in the January _Black Belt_ magazine (or, equivalently, in the MartialTalk magazine version of that interview here), or his insistence on the role of a supposedly completely indigenous 'taekyon' in his own MA training, based on instruction from a supposedly famous calligrapher and instructor whose existence there is no record of, and which the Taekyon Research Association itself is dubious about (see Capener and Robert Young's comprehensive 1993 _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_ article, 'The history and development of _taekyon_' for documentation).
> 
> _That's_ what I mean.


 
I've never seen the Combat interview, But I didn't see how Gen. Choi changed his story. He wanted to change the Tang Soo Do that the Koreans were learning. He developed new Patterns with the assistence of his black belts. He has stated in the past that without learning Karate, he would never have developed TKD. Gen. Choi was Brazen when it came to two things, Japanese and the WTF. But again, in all the articles and interviews I've read , he has never changed his story on TKD(2000 yrs old and so on).


----------



## tkd1964

Kacey said:


> Toward the end of his life, especially after he was diagnosed with the stomach cancer than ultimately killed him, Gen. Choi expressed a great deal of desire to die and be buried in his homeland, where he was born. This required getting the North Korean government to allow him to return without being imprisoned. Did that affect what he expressed about his personal experiences? It certainly could have. Did it? Only he could have known for sure, and perhaps members of his family - and they are not talking, nor can I blame them. Nor would he be the first person to make such a choice.


 
He asked the South Korean government to allow his return. They didn't respond due to the stipulations he asked for so he asked the North Korean Government and they said yes. I guess when you know your days are numbered you look for what you really want and what you really are. In his one interview he said he would want to be buried in Canada.


----------



## exile

tkd1964 said:


> I've never seen the Combat interview, But I didn't see how Gen. Choi changed his story. He wanted to change the Tang Soo Do that the Koreans were learning. He developed new Patterns with the assistence of his black belts. He has stated in the past that without learning Karate, he would never have developed TKD. Gen. Choi was Brazen when it came to two things, Japanese and the WTF. But again, in all the articles and interviews I've read , he has never changed his story on TKD(2000 yrs old and so on).



There were three _Combat_ interviews:

*1970s:* _Without karate there would have been no Taekwon-do_

*1980s:* _Karate was simply a reference tool that helped_

*early 1990s:* _Karate had only a minor or no impact on Taekwon-do/Karate has nothing to do with Taekwon-do_

(_Ch'ang Hon Taekwon-fo Hae Sul_, by Stuart Anslow, 2006, Diggory Press (Cornwall, UK), p.11).

You don't see this as a 'change of story'?

Or, as per the interview I gave you a link to with Gm. Kim:

_*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&#8217;s he came up with a story about martial arts links to Korguryo dynasty, Silla Dynasty, 2000 years of tradition, etc.*He created new forms and gave each form a name related to something in Korean history, such as a scholar&#8217;s name or a famous Korean patriot&#8217;s name. He called his system, &#8220;Taekwondo.&#8221; He was trying to get away from the connection to the Japanese - trying to make something patriotic. He wanted everyone to follow this new line and give up their previous training._​
Gm. Kim&#8212;who published the first book on the Palgwes when they were first created (heavily based on the Pinan kata set) and was a Kwan leader and the senior instructor in the Chung Moo Kwan, and later a Kwan leader in the Kwang-duk Kwan, in the late 1950s&#8212;was, as his _BB_ interview makes explicit, approached on several occasions by Gen. Choi and urged to change affiliation to the Oh Do Kwan. He was an insider on the scene during the formative Kwan era, and knew exactly who was teaching what, what their background in the MAs was, their connections to the Japanese karate scene, and so on. _He_ is telling you that Gen. Choi started off with the same curriculum as everyone else, derived, like everyone else (except Hwang Kee) from either Shotokan or Shukokan karate, and then, later on in the post-Korean War era, began to elaborate this legend of TKD's 'ancient' origins.

In view of Gen. Choi's own words and the testimony I've cited from one of those who was 'present at the creation', so to speak, are you really going to try to maintain that he was telling the same story over the four decades following the Korean War?

I also want to forestall red-herring objections along the lines I've already suggested, that in bringing these contradictions into the discussion I'm dishonoring the memory of a great man, or some such line. The underlying issue that drove my OP here has to do with the distinctly different technical approaches, on the part of many TSDers on the one hand and the 'official' Korean TKD directorate line on the other, to what were at one time the hyungs trained in common by the two groups. I was perplexed by the candor with which many TSD people seem to accept the O/J antecents of their art, _in spite of the fact that Hwang Kee alone among the original five Kwan founders didn't study in Japan_, compared with the denial of this connection that became a leitmotif of 'official' TKD in the post-Kwan era, with Gen. Choi arguably the first and most prominent example. The issue is important not as an obscure bit of ancient sectarian history, but because the different outlooks inform the technical approach to the hyungs practiced by TSD and TKD respectively. The discussion so far has suggested some interesting reasons why this split in attitude might have occurred, and leads me to suspect that dojangs which&#8212;in defiance of the dictates of TKD Central in Seoul&#8212;maintain their separate Kwan identity and links to their original curricula are also going to take a different approch to 'reading' hyungs, and deciphering their interpretations and applications, than those which identify completely with the canonical KKW curriculum. In the development of this discussion, I'm making no value judgments on Gen. Choi's revisionism; but to deny it strikes me as _very_ wishful thinking.


----------



## Master K

Steel Tiger said:


> I found the reference to Hwang Kee's Chinese training interesting especially in light of the reference to Seven Stars. There is a northern style called Seven Stars Praying Mantis and I wondered if the inspiration might have come from there.
> 
> I've just had another look at some of the videos you posted and compared them with some mantis fist and the similarity is quite striking. Take a look at this example:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just thought I would offer my technical observations.



Actually, the Chil Sung hyungs/forms are represented by the constellation known as the Big Dipper or Plough.  The form name translates to mean "Seventh Star".  And supposedly the reference is to the North Star which is contained in the constellation.  Many, many years ago when travellers would be traveling at night, they would use the North Star to guide their direction.  As such these Chil Sung forms are supposed to help guide the Moo Duk Kwan practitioner to become a better martial artist.

I had also heard the story that Hwang Kee's mother had a dream of the constellation or the North Star itself when Hwang Kee was conceived.

Actually, the creation date of both the Chil Sung and Yuk Ro sets of forms are controversial.  The Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan party line states the Chil Sung were created in the 1952.  They were not unveiled to the most senior Moo Duk Kwan practitioners until 1983.  All of the most senior Moo Duk Kwan practitioners state the Chil Sung and Yuk Ro Hyungs were created during the 1980s.  As to which date is really the truth, I will leave that to the others to determine.


----------



## Brad Dunne

I've just uncovered some interesting info. It seems that an overlooked aspect of history has come to the front. They found cave drawings outside of Taewhat and they were of French origins. It showed figures, kicking a large animal and then kissing each other cheeks. 

So now we know that TKD is actually Savate, but without pointy shoes and tight pants...........:drink2tha


----------



## exile

Brad Dunne said:


> I've just uncovered some interesting info. It seems that an overlooked aspect of history has come to the front. They found cave drawings outside of Taewhat and they were of French origins. It showed figures, kicking a large animal and then kissing each other cheeks.
> 
> So now we know that TKD is actually Savate, but without pointy shoes and tight pants...........:drink2tha



Whoathat should satisfy the most ardent devotee of 'ancient TKD'!!

Brad, better send that data off to the WTF sitethey're gonna want to incorporate this material pronto! :lol:


----------



## tkd1964

exile said:


> There were three _Combat_ interviews:
> 
> *1970s:* _Without karate there would have been no Taekwon-do_
> 
> *1980s:* _Karate was simply a reference tool that helped_
> 
> *early 1990s:* _Karate had only a minor or no impact on Taekwon-do/Karate has nothing to do with Taekwon-do_
> 
> (_Ch'ang Hon Taekwon-fo Hae Sul_, by Stuart Anslow, 2006, Diggory Press (Cornwall, UK), p.11).
> 
> You don't see this as a 'change of story'?
> 
> Or, as per the interview I gave you a link to with Gm. Kim:
> 
> _*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.*He created new forms and gave each form a name related to something in Korean history, such as a scholars name or a famous Korean patriots name. He called his system, Taekwondo. He was trying to get away from the connection to the Japanese - trying to make something patriotic. He wanted everyone to follow this new line and give up their previous training._​Gm. Kimwho published the first book on the Palgwes when they were first created (heavily based on the Pinan kata set) and was a Kwan leader and the senior instructor in the Chung Moo Kwan, and later a Kwan leader in the Kwang-duk Kwan, in the late 1950swas, as his _BB_ interview makes explicit, approached on several occasions by Gen. Choi and urged to change affiliation to the Oh Do Kwan. He was an insider on the scene during the formative Kwan era, and knew exactly who was teaching what, what their background in the MAs was, their connections to the Japanese karate scene, and so on. _He_ is telling you that Gen. Choi started off with the same curriculum as everyone else, derived, like everyone else (except Hwang Kee) from either Shotokan or Shukokan karate, and then, later on in the post-Korean War era, began to elaborate this legend of TKD's 'ancient' origins.
> 
> In view of Gen. Choi's own words and the testimony I've cited from one of those who was 'present at the creation', so to speak, are you really going to try to maintain that he was telling the same story over the four decades following the Korean War?
> 
> I also want to forestall red-herring objections along the lines I've already suggested, that in bringing these contradictions into the discussion I'm dishonoring the memory of a great man, or some such line. The underlying issue that drove my OP here has to do with the distinctly different technical approaches, on the part of many TSDers on the one hand and the 'official' Korean TKD directorate line on the other, to what were at one time the hyungs trained in common by the two groups. I was perplexed by the candor with which many TSD people seem to accept the O/J antecents of their art, _in spite of the fact that Hwang Kee alone among the original five Kwan founders didn't study in Japan_, compared with the denial of this connection that became a leitmotif of 'official' TKD in the post-Kwan era, with Gen. Choi arguably the first and most prominent example. The issue is important not as an obscure bit of ancient sectarian history, but because the different outlooks inform the technical approach to the hyungs practiced by TSD and TKD respectively. The discussion so far has suggested some interesting reasons why this split in attitude might have occurred, and leads me to suspect that dojangs whichin defiance of the dictates of TKD Central in Seoulmaintain their separate Kwan identity and links to their original curricula are also going to take a different approch to 'reading' hyungs, and deciphering their interpretations and applications, than those which identify completely with the canonical KKW curriculum. In the development of this discussion, I'm making no value judgments on Gen. Choi's revisionism; but to deny it strikes me as _very_ wishful thinking.


 

as I have stated, I don't know about the Combat magazine but I would like to read it. As for GM Kim, the 2000 year history has nothing to do with TKD but with Korean history. The patterns are named after Korean patriots who were important to Koreas history. He did not want to be teaching his soldiers Karate(Tang Soo Do). He wanted something the Koreans could take pride in. Taekwon-Do has only been around since 1955. 
Do they have these Combat mags in backissue? What you have printed would show an obvious change in his story and I would like to read them. To say that Karate had little/no influence is just rediculous.


----------



## exile

tkd1964 said:


> As for GM Kim, the 2000 year history has nothing to do with TKD but with Korean history.



Judging by what Gm. Kim has said, your interpretation here does not match what Gen. Choi actually claimed. We all _know_ about the `2000 years of Korean history'; we have excellent evidence that there was indeed a Three Kingdoms era, and that Silla, Paekche and Koguryeo were involved in pretty much nonstop war with each other; and we know that figures from this 2000 year history were part of his naming scheme for the Ch'ang Hon forms. But that is _not_ what is denoted by

_*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*..._​


tkd1964 said:


> Do they have these Combat mags in backissue? What you have printed would show an obvious change in his story and I would like to read them. To say that Karate had little/no influence is just rediculous.



Stuart Anslow is actually a member of this sitecheck with him about the availability of these issues. There has _got_ to be a place where they are available, at least on microfilm.


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## Kacey

tkd1964 said:


> as I have stated, I don't know about the Combat magazine but I would like to read it. As for GM Kim, the 2000 year history has nothing to do with TKD but with Korean history. The patterns are named after Korean patriots who were important to Koreas history. He did not want to be teaching his soldiers Karate(Tang Soo Do). He wanted something the Koreans could take pride in. Taekwon-Do has only been around since 1955.
> Do they have these Combat mags in backissue? What you have printed would show an obvious change in his story and I would like to read them. To say that Karate had little/no influence is just rediculous.


Regardless of what Gen. Choi said in his later years, I know no masters or grand masters (and I know several personally - all of whom trained extensively with Gen. Choi) who practice Ch'ang H'on TKD who deny that TKD has a healthy portion of Shotokan Karate contained within it.

Gen. Choi was a Korean patriot; he was personally involved in the Korean Independence movement when Korea was fighting its way free of Japan.  That's why so many of the tul histories are related to patriots who were instrumental in that effort.


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## Steel Tiger

Master K said:


> Actually, the Chil Sung hyungs/forms are represented by the constellation known as the Big Dipper or Plough. The form name translates to mean "Seventh Star". And supposedly the reference is to the North Star which is contained in the constellation. Many, many years ago when travellers would be traveling at night, they would use the North Star to guide their direction. As such these Chil Sung forms are supposed to help guide the Moo Duk Kwan practitioner to become a better martial artist.


 
The seven stars referred to in Seven Stars Praying Mantis also refer to the Big Dipper.  One of the characteristic stances of the style is supposed to plot the seven stars on specific points of the body.

I like the concept of guiding practitioners to improve themselves.


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## tellner

The Seven Stars is a classic motif in Chinese martial culture. Cave paintings or no, I don't think the Koreans can legitimately claim they started it :shrug:


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## tkd1964

Kacey said:


> Regardless of what Gen. Choi said in his later years, I know no masters or grand masters (and I know several personally - all of whom trained extensively with Gen. Choi) who practice Ch'ang H'on TKD who deny that TKD has a healthy portion of Shotokan Karate contained within it.
> 
> Gen. Choi was a Korean patriot; he was personally involved in the Korean Independence movement when Korea was fighting its way free of Japan. That's why so many of the tul histories are related to patriots who were instrumental in that effort.


 
Personally, I never have either, nor have I heard the general Deny it. That is why I would like to read the magazines for myself. It sounds as if Mr. Anslow took snippits and put them in his book but I would like to read the whole articles. 

Mike


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Personally, I never have either, nor have I heard the general Deny it. That is why I would like to read the magazines for myself. It sounds as if Mr. Anslow took snippits and put them in his book but I would like to read the whole articles.
> 
> Mike



As I say, the articles must exist in some form. And since Mr. Anslow is a member of MartialTalkhis username is Stuart A, and you'll have no trouble finding him in the member's listyou can easily pursue the matter with him and ask him, straight out, if he 'took snippets and put them in his book'.


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## Steel Tiger

Just thought I would throw this out there for you guys.  

While looking into the martial arts of Taiwan I came across a system created by the famous martial artist Hong Yixiang.  It is called Tang Shou Tao.  It means what you would think it would mean (Chinese Hand Way) and was created in the 1950s and early 1960s.  It is not a style so much as it is a system of concepts and principles.

Found it interesting in light of this discussion and thought someone else might as well.


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## exile

Taiwanese MAs are a completely closed book to me, ST&#8212;but I've wondered from time to time if there were any development there that differed from the mainland arts. What are core ideas of this recent system that you mentioned?



Steel Tiger said:


> Just thought I would throw this out there for you guys.
> 
> While looking into the martial arts of Taiwan I came across a system created by the famous martial artist Hong Yixiang.  It is called Tang Shou Tao.  It means what you would think it would mean (Chinese Hand Way) and was created in the 1950s and early 1960s.  It is not a style so much as it is a system of concepts and principles.
> 
> Found it interesting in light of this discussion and thought someone else might as well.


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## Steel Tiger

exile said:


> Taiwanese MAs are a completely closed book to me, STbut I've wondered from time to time if there were any development there that differed from the mainland arts. What are core ideas of this recent system that you mentioned?


 
Taiwan is a strange world where some very obscure CMA go to live forever.  Have a look for Robert W Smith's book _Chinese Boxing: Masters and Methods_ for a good overview of Taiwanese martial arts (in the 1960s anyway).

Tang Shou Tao is a system developed to help a student learn internal martial arts.  It is based in the three major Chinese internal arts - xingyi, bagua, and taiji.  Basically what Hong, and his teacher Chang Chun-Feng, are saying that to properly develop internal power you must start with something like Shaolin Kung fu then progress to xingyi, then bagua, then taiji.  Hong was of the opinion that if you started with taiji it would be very difficult to develop and understand internal power.

I don't know if I agree with this as I feel that my own understanding and development aren't too bad and I didn't follow this pattern.

One other thing Hong Yixiang was adamant about was the development of the physical and basic martial skills.  He felt that students should have a essential understanding of punching, kicking, blocking, and throwing before they began training in the internal arts.


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## Brian R. VanCise

Truthfully I know of no time when General Choi did not admit that he trained in Shotokan Karate.  Heck at one seminar that I was at oh so long, long, long ago he talked about the severity of his early Karate training and how that helped to form him in some ways.

Shotokan had to have influenced early TKD of that their is little doubt.  Yet ITF TKD has moved beyond it's Shotokan influence.  Still though if you look closely you can see it clearly as it is part of the lineage. (Shotokan)

Applications of the bunkai of Shotokan Karate will in my opinion and I know exile shares this as well fit perfectly with the TKD that came from General Choi.


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## exile

Brian R. VanCise said:


> Truthfully I know of no time when General Choi did not admit that he trained in Shotokan Karate.  Heck at one seminar that I was at oh so long, long, long ago he talked about the severity of his early Karate training and how that helped to form him in some ways.
> 
> *Shotokan had to have influenced early TKD of that their is little doubt.  Yet ITF TKD has moved beyond it's Shotokan influence.  Still though if you look closely you can see it clearly as it is part of the lineage. (Shotokan)
> 
> Applications of the bunkai of Shotokan Karate will in my opinion and I know exile shares this as well fit perfectly with the TKD that came from General Choi.*



I wouldn't argue with any of the material I've bolded, for sure. I myself have no idea how anyone could plausibly deny the role of karate in providing the _platform_ for TKD; yet take a look at the utterly bogus narrative at this site&#8212;the official site of USA Taekwondo, the national governing body&#8212;the National Member Association!&#8212;of WTF TKD in the US. Read it and weep. Apart from one miserable little reference to 'other martial arts' (which flagrently contradicts the premise of the first three sentences that this is a completely unique MA that is among the very oldest in the world), there is absolutely no connection with the documented MA training of the Kwan founders. I read this and I think of Orwell's _1984:_ in the Newspeak of the KKW/WTF, the O/J historical sources of TKD have simply become 'unpeople'. 

Given this sort of thing, I'm never surprised to find people with major agendas engaged in massive revisionist rewriting of documented history. This sort of thing works, too&#8212;we say, the truth will out, but that's optimism and idealism with a vengeance. If enough of the documentary record is suppressed, and the official story promoted aggressively enough, a few generations is all it takes to wipe the truth from people's minds. In Japan, I recently read somewhere, almost no one under the age of thirty knows what happened at Nanking in the imperialist expansion leading up to, and continued in, WWII.



Steel Tiger said:


> Taiwan is a strange world where some very obscure CMA go to live forever.  Have a look for Robert W Smith's book _Chinese Boxing: Masters and Methods_ for a good overview of Taiwanese martial arts (in the 1960s anyway).



Thanks for the pointer, ST. I agree: Taiwan is a very strange place. An old girlfriend of mine, someone I was with for a long time,from an English family that had been part of the expatriate British Raj military in India, got interested in Taiwan, became fluent enough in Taiwanese Mandarin that native speakers, talking to her over the phone, could not tell she wasn't Chinese, and got involved in the Taiwan Independence Movement, smuggling... all manner of thing into and out of the country. She had some... surreal stories to tell about her experiences there. I can well believe that there are pockets of Mainland culture still maintained there have that are long gone on the Mainland itself. Will take a look for Smith's book... 



Steel Tiger said:


> Tang Shou Tao is a system developed to help a student learn internal martial arts.  It is based in the three major Chinese internal arts - xingyi, bagua, and taiji.  *Basically what Hong, and his teacher Chang Chun-Feng, are saying that to properly develop internal power you must start with something like Shaolin Kung fu then progress to xingyi, then bagua, then taiji. * Hong was of the opinion that if you started with taiji it would be very difficult to develop and understand internal power.
> 
> I don't know if I agree with this as I feel that my own understanding and development aren't too bad and I didn't follow this pattern.
> 
> One other thing Hong Yixiang was adamant about was the development of the physical and basic martial skills.  *He felt that students should have a essential understanding of punching, kicking, blocking, and throwing before they began training in the internal arts.*



Very interesting! So no contradiction perceived there.... you need the external platform, and then work inward... 

Definitely has to go on my to-read list!


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## Brian R. VanCise

Well Exile as we both know the WTF is a whole different beast than the Tae Kwon Do that came from the lineage of General Choi. (very different)


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## exile

Brian R. VanCise said:


> Well Exile as we both know the WTF is a whole different beast than the Tae Kwon Do that came from the lineage of General Choi. (very different)



That's true&#8212;but there does seem to be a lot of agreement that Gen. Choi was in the vanguard of the 'de-Japanification' of TKD. He certainly purged the ITF forms he (with, some claim, a very large input from Nam Tae Hi) created of much resemblance to the common Shotokan set he, Byung Jik Ro and most of the other first-generation Kwan leaders took as their core curriculum in the early days of the Kwan era. Performance and narrative are often linked. Change the performance significantly, and you open the door for a very different storyline. So my feeling is, the jury is probably still out. And the testimony from Gm. Kim Pyung-soo, and the dubious status of the General's claims about his 'taekyon' training, give a lot of grounds for skepticism about the degree to which he felt obliged to stick to the (documentable) facts about the JMA background to the Kwan-era system that came to be called TKD.

I'm with tkd1964 here; I'd really like to get my hands on those _Combat_ interviews...


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## tkd1964

I would have to say that the WTF has not given due credit to the Kwan founders and their roll in TKD. I was glad to see that Two Masters (names I don't remember) have published a history of the early years. History is an important part of TKD and the way the WTF minimized it hurts.


----------



## exile

tkd1964 said:


> I would have to say that the WTF has not given due credit to the Kwan founders and their roll in TKD. I was glad to see that Two Masters (names I don't remember) have published a history of the early years. History is an important part of TKD and the way the WTF minimized it hurts.



I've wondered for a long time _why_ the WTF takes this aggressively antihistorical line about TKD, and I first assumed, like most people who worry about this, that the reason was connected with anti-Japanese sentiment generally, based on the horrible experience of the Occupation. But lately I've come to think that while hostility toward Japan is an enabler, the real motivation of the WTF is much more cynical: TKD is now a multibillion dollar business, a huge part of Korea's nation identity, part of the creation of Brand Korea, and is so specifically as an expression of Olympic competitive sport. The linkage to karate is something of an embarrasssment to this branding of TKD (and hence Korea) via the Olympic tournament sport, because karate still has strong martial combat overtones. Part of insisting on the uniqueness of TKD is, if this line of thinking holds any water, part of protecting the WTF sport franchise from negative comparison with Olympic TKD's street-smart, tough martial cousins. 

No one is saying that TKD _is_ karate, of course; history is important, though, in understanding what _current_ forces are driving the development of the art in certain ways, as well as giving us big hints about the content of the technical toolkit that's still inherent in the TKD hyungs if we just look for them. The Korean TKD directorate does the practitioners a major disservice in trying to separate the current art from its documented past...


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## tkd1964

exile said:


> In his last interview in _Combat_ magazine in the 1990s, Gen. Choi maintained explcitly that TKD owed _nothing_ to karate. Check out the documentation in Stuart Anslow's book on the Ch'ang Hong patterns. And check out Gm. Kim Pyung-Soo's account of how Choi changed his story on the provenance of TKD, in his interview with Rob McLain in the January _Black Belt_ magazine (or, equivalently, in the MartialTalk magazine version of that interview here), or his insistence on the role of a supposedly completely indigenous 'taekyon' in his own MA training, based on instruction from a supposedly famous calligrapher and instructor whose existence there is no record of, and which the Taekyon Research Association itself is dubious about (see Capener and Robert Young's comprehensive 1993 _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_ article, 'The history and development of _taekyon_' for documentation).
> 
> _That's_ what I mean.


 
I asked Mr. Anslow about the Magazines and he said he no longer has them. I've looked at the interviews that I have copies of plus his autobiography and in none of them does he deny his Karate links. 
As you metion GM Kim Soo, go to his site and read the Korean Karate history. You can replace the word Taekwon-Do for Kwon Bup.


----------



## Brian R. VanCise

exile said:


> I've wondered for a long time _why_ the WTF takes this aggressively antihistorical line about TKD, and I first assumed, like most people who worry about this, that the reason was connected with anti-Japanese sentiment generally, based on the horrible experience of the Occupation. But lately I've come to think that while hostility toward Japan is an enabler, the real motivation of the WTF is much more cynical: TKD is now a multibillion dollar business, a huge part of Korea's nation identity, part of the creation of Brand Korea, and is so specifically as an expression of Olympic competitive sport. The linkage to karate is something of an embarrasssment to this branding of TKD (and hence Korea) via the Olympic tournament sport, because karate still has strong martial combat overtones. Part of insisting on the uniqueness of TKD is, if this line of thinking holds any water, part of protecting the WTF sport franchise from negative comparison with Olympic TKD's street-smart, tough martial cousins.
> 
> No one is saying that TKD _is_ karate, of course; history is important, though, in understanding what _current_ forces are driving the development of the art in certain ways, as well as giving us big hints about the content of the technical toolkit that's still inherent in the TKD hyungs if we just look for them. The Korean TKD directorate does the practitioners a major disservice in trying to separate the current art from its documented past...


 
True another fact might be that they do not want to be in a position of making any one, two or three individuals to big in the grand scope of things so that the sport is directly government controlled.  Meaning everyone has to go through them.


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> I
> As you metion GM Kim Soo, go to his site and read the Korean Karate history. You can replace the word Taekwon-Do for Kwon Bup.



I did. Those articles were written in 1966, when Gm. Kim was trying to gain a foothold in the US. Now go to his latest writing, his article in _Black Belt_/MartialTalk here. You might find the following passages pertinent to your own comments:

_GMKS: The first generation of instructors (instructors that opened the first kwans following WWII) only taught a few years before the Korean War started and the kwans temporarily closed. Some of the first generation instructors disappeared, such as Yoon Byung-in and Chun Sang-sup. So, the top students of the various kwans may have only 3-5 years of training under the first generation. There wasn&#8217;t enough time to really discuss the background because of the classroom environment of &#8220;no questions.&#8221; Also, because of the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1909 to 1945, the second generation of martial artists hated the Japanese. Connection with anything Japanese, karate for example, was frowned upon. Even though karate was from Okinawa, most kwan founders studied karate taught in Japan during college.

In 1960, I would frequently visit the Korean Taesoo-Do Association office. During one visit, a kwan head instructor got very angry with me because I wrote some history about his organization that included a connection to karate through Japan. I knew he had a reputation of assaulting people when he was mad at them, instead of talking or arguing. He was a &#8220;hit first, ask questions later-type person.&#8221; Luckily, the Vietnam Taekwondo delegation was visiting the Taesoo-Do Association that day. So, the kwan head instructor had to calm down because of the witnesses. This is an example of the feeling many people held for the Japanese.

RM: What did students call their martial art during those early days?

GMKS: Most people called it Tang Soo Do, Kong Soo Do or Kwon Bop. General Choi Hong-hi called his system, &#8220;Tae Kwon Do.&#8221;

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&#8217;s he came up with a story about martial arts links to Korguryo dynasty, Silla Dynasty, 2000 years of tradition, etc.* He created new forms and gave each form a name related to something in Korean history, such as a scholar&#8217;s name or a famous Korean patriot&#8217;s name. He called his system, &#8220;Taekwondo.&#8221; He was trying to get away from the connection to the Japanese - trying to make something patriotic. He wanted everyone to follow this new line and give up their previous training....

RM: It seems that some of the Korean martial art history you mentioned during this interview can be found on the internet.

GMKS: I saw that too. Yes, today the truth is coming out.* Still some people try to make up some mysterious stories - claim their art is 2000 years old or from a monk in the mountains or something. But, if people are educated about history and lineage, they cannot be fooled. I believe Korea, like many other countries, had some type of martial arts being practiced before the 20th century. But after the Japanese occupation of Korea (1909-1945), indigenous martial arts were gone and influences from other places (Japan, Okinawa, China) were being taught. 

This is the same as if someone&#8217;s father is a farmer, but tells everyone his father is a doctor. You should show respect for your father and let people know who he is, not make up some strange story. The same is for martial arts lineage. Your direct instructor is your martial arts father; his teacher is your grandfather, etc. This is your family line in the martial arts. It doesn&#8217;t matter where the art comes from. Martial art belongs to the people that practice and preserve it, not to &#8220;this country or that country.&#8221;*_​
That's _40 years_ of research and writing after the 1966 article posted on his website, and becoming established enough to not have to worry about offending anyone who doesn't like him undermining the nouveau official line. I've bolded a few of the passages that seem to me relevant to the point. And Robert Young, in his seminal and detailed article 'The history and development of Taekyon' in the 1993 volume of _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_, singles out Gm. Kim as one of the very few Korean grandmasters who have bucked the enormous social pressure to endorse the official Korean line on 'ancient TKD', and has some choice observations there, based on his years of living and doing research there, on the intensity of that pressure. I'm in my office at the moment and don't have access to the paper, but... yes, I think a choice excerpt or two from Young's comments on Gm. Kim and the others whistleblowers he quotes would be very germane, at this point. More later on that. 



Brian R. VanCise said:


> True another fact might be that they do not want to be in a position of making any one, two or three individuals to big in the grand scope of things so that the sport is directly government controlled.  Meaning everyone has to go through them.



It could be, but it's such a relatively unusual mindset for an Asian MA... and in the end, I think it's going to cause huge disaffection among TKD practitioners. My guess is, it's partly to do with protecting the Olympic golden goose, and partly to do with the essential disappearance of locally produced, family-owned MA in the wake of Yi Dynasty's hostility to civilian martial arts, and latterly the Japanese occupation...


----------



## tkd1964

Yes, the article was from 1966 and his talk with Gen. Choi was in the 50's. GM Kim brings up the ancient art of Kwon Bup, Taekkyon and the ilk in 1966, ten years after His talk with Gen. Choi. 
General Choi doesn't deny his Karate links does he. Because he developed different forms and gave them historcal Korean names does not mean he's denying his Karate roots. Tomorrow I will add some quotes of his since I am not at home right now. 
General Choi said he didn't want to teach Koreans Tang Soo Do(Karate) which is why he developed Taekwon-Do. 

Mike


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Yes, the article was from 1966 and his talk with Gen. Choi was in the 50's. GM Kim brings up the ancient art of Kwon Bup, Taekkyon and the ilk in 1966, ten years after His talk with Gen. Choi.



And 42 years of research and publishing later, as _Black Belt_ KMA correspondent for much of that time, you see what his judgment is on what he was told. 



tkd1964 said:


> General Choi doesn't deny his Karate links does he. Because he developed different forms and gave them historcal Korean names does not mean he's denying his Karate roots.



That's not what the denial in question consists of. If Stuart's recollection is correct, he most definitely _did_ deny his karate links in his final _Combat_ interview. I am attempting to locate microfische records of the journal and expect to be able to turn it up in the next little while, and then we shall see, eh?



tkd1964 said:


> Tomorrow I will add some quotes of his since I am not at home right now.
> General Choi said he didn't want to teach Koreans Tang Soo Do(Karate) which is why he developed Taekwon-Do.



Well, it'll be interesting to compare all the citations, once they're retrieved. _Combat_ is a UK journal which is still going strong, and I'm going to be contacting them directly to obtain all three of their interviews with Gen. Choi.


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## terryl965

Well all I would like to add is what a wonderful world we live in when we try to lie about everything :rofl:


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## exile

terryl965 said:


> Well all I would like to add is what a wonderful world we live in when we try to lie about everything :rofl:



You know what? One consequence of everyone lying is that it gives you a kind of privacy that you wouldn't otherwise have. Because if everyone lies, than anything _anyone_ says about you_even if true_will be taken with a grain, or a bag, of salt. After all, knowing that everyone lies is going to make you pretty skeptical about anything you hear, eh?


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## MBuzzy

exile said:


> You know what? One consequence of everyone lying is that it gives you a kind of privacy that you wouldn't otherwise have. Because if everyone lies, than anything _anyone_ says about you_even if true_will be taken with a grain, or a bag, of salt. After all, knowing that everyone lies is going to make you pretty skeptical about anything you hear, eh?


 
You know....Skepticism can be a GOOD thing, especially when it comes to history and academic research - so maybe these decades of lies have actually improved the overall environment.


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## terryl965

MBuzzy said:


> You know....Skepticism can be a GOOD thing, especially when it comes to history and academic research - so maybe these decades of lies have actually improved the overall environment.


 
It could be, we will have to wait and see in another houndred years


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## tkd1964

exile said:


> And Robert Young, in his seminal and detailed article 'The history and development of Taekyon' in the 1993 volume of _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_, singles out Gm. Kim as one of the very few Korean grandmasters who have bucked the enormous social pressure to endorse the official Korean line on 'ancient TKD',
> 
> ...


 
Gen. Choi has never claimed TKD to be some ancient art. Have you read any of his books or his bio?


----------



## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Gen. Choi has never claimed TKD to be some ancient art. Have you read any of his books or his bio?



Yup. What do you think his claims about Taekyon were in aid of? When Gm. Kim refers&#8212;in the part of his interview I cited&#8212;to Gen. Choi's  references to the supposedly formative influence of taekyon on his MA, that is code for an alleged MA system that goes back to the Three Kingdoms era.  Taekyon was supposed to be the modern relic of an ancient indigenous fighting system called _subak_ (though the latter is actually just the Korean transliteration/pronunciation of an early Chinese term for boxing'). 

So far as I know, Gen. Choi was the first to push this 'ancient' pseudolineage for TKD. The fact is, the modern Taekyon association is itself very skeptical that he ever actually studied the sport/game, which he refers to as a fighting system, but which was much closer to a kind of pan-Northern Asian foot wrestling game, focusing on unbalancing and stomping strikes to the feet and legs, and which did not appear in Korea till the begining of the 19th century. This has been discussed ad infinitem elsewhere on the site, and there is actually very little evidence that Gen. Choi ever studied or practised taekyon. 

It's true that General Choi _also_ claimed that he himself had invented TKD. But the taekyon connection allowed him to link it to an ancient past. So he could have it both ways: his own  personal creation, built on top of a putatively ancient putative martial art. That, I'm pretty sure, is what Gm. Kim is getting at when he talks about the General's claim of a history for TKD going back 2000 years.


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## FieldDiscipline

Choi sadly/amusingly/thankfully (delete depending on preconception) changed his story on how TKD came about throughout his life.


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## terryl965

FieldDiscipline said:


> Choi sadly/amusingly/thankfully (delete depending on preconception) changed his story on how TKD came about throughout his life.


 
This si so true, I can recall him stating that TKD was not ancient at all but brought by the Karate influence. I believe that was around 1984 or so.


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## exile

FieldDiscipline said:


> Choi sadly/amusingly/thankfully (delete depending on preconception) changed his story on how TKD came about throughout his life.



This is true, and I think the following may be relevant to just _how_ he changed that story. You can see the General's TKD career in three distinct phases. First, he's just one of a number of young Korean MAists who travel to Japan to study karate, hoping, apparently, to make a career of it on his return to Korea. Next, he's a rapidly rising military officer&#8212;with the reputation of a fearless patriot putting his life on the line to end control of Korea by the hated Japanese occupying forces&#8212;in a succession of military dictatorships (the Rhee regime was a covertly military goverment; the Park coup gave the RoK an overtly military regime) who is able to parlay his clout into a paramount position in the South Korean MA scene and, as Gm. Kim points out, bring embarrassingly harsh pressure to bear on dissenters who didn't sign on the Oh Do Kwan dotted line. Finally, he's in disgrace, partly a result of misjudging the nature of political conditions in Korea, partly as a result of his many enemies' seeking to bring him down (anyone in such a position of power and influence is going to have many enemies, and probably very few genuine friends), eventually becoming an expatriate whose MA organization has relocated out of Korean entirely. 

 Now, just look at the differences in his situation in the second and third phases of his MA career. In the phase between 1965 and the emergence of a unified national organization which absorbs, and liquidates, the separate Kwans, the thrust of his activity involves anti-Japanese/anti-Communist resistance. This is a period in Korean history when the Koreans were seeking to purge all traces of their humiliating, abusive treatment by the racist Japanese military.  And not coincidentally, Gm. Kim tells us, Gen. Choi's story about the roots of TKD at this time link it to an ancient complex of (basically unknown, but symbolically very effective) indigenous martial arts. In the final phase of his career, when he's effectively in exile and his enemy isn't the Japanese but the RoK TKD institutions that have succeeded, and, in his view, supplanted him, what's crucial is not that TKD rests on an ancient indigenous foundation, but that _he created it._ During the post-Occupation period, he needs it to be ancient, to purge the Japanese influence. During his post-exile career, he needs it to be modern, because that's what it will be if he created it. Two different time periods, two different stories, each appropriate to the needs of the time. In the last phase of his life, his _vindication_, against the KTA/WTF bureaucracy which at times seems to have tried to make him an 'unperson', in Orwell's wonderful term, is tied up with convincing us that without him there would have been no TKD.  

I've read innumerable biographies of 'important' people (no more important than _any_ of us, but somehow they get the reputation for being so, eh? ) And one thing that strikes me, over and over again, is that the views these people express, the positions they take, and the spin they put on their own pasts and that of the people around them and the events they've been involved in, depends a great deal on what is happening to them at the time they're writing whatever it is they're writing, or saying publicly whatever it is they're saying. I've come to the conclusion that this is how people work. It's not cynicism or duplicity; it's the brute-force fact that we structure our picture of the world so that it leads up to our being right about whatever it is we need to be right about in order to be vindicated. I think that's just how people are.


----------



## IcemanSK

JWLuiza said:


> Wait,
> 
> the Korean's call it Yudo.
> 
> I don't see the attack or the issue here though. The politics behind a MA don't dictate the quality of the practitioners. Maybe I don't see it since I don't have a dog in this fight. Overall the argument doesn't really matter except from an academic point of view.


 
No attack made or intended. My GM (who learned "Korean Karate" in the early 60's) still calls it Korean Karate occasionally.

I have no problem with TKD's roots as Karate & recognizing it as such. I do recognize that it has evolved quite a bit since the 1940's. Heck, it's changed a bunch in my 26 years in TKD. 

I am one of the few TKD folks who holds onto my Kwan roots in Chung Do Kwan. I'm blessed enough to know a bit about it & want to continue those traditions (moreso than Olympic-style of the WTF: of which I'm a part, also). I like knowing the Shotokan roots. But the katas that I need to learn are done uniquely from Shotokan. So, my focus is on the way I need to learn them.  

I disagree with many who say most folks don't know what TKD is. I run into too many folks who say, "Oh, my 8 year old grandson is a BB." My focus is on doing & teaching solid TKD Chung Do Kwan & redefining what MA is for a lot of folks. A better TKD than what many are used to.


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## terryl965

IcemanSK said:


> No attack made or intended. My GM (who learned "Korean Karate" in the early 60's) still calls it Korean Karate occasionally.
> 
> I have no problem with TKD's roots as Karate & recognizing it as such. I do recognize that it has evolved quite a bit since the 1940's. Heck, it's changed a bunch in my 26 years in TKD.
> 
> I am one of the few TKD folks who holds onto my Kwan roots in Chung Do Kwan. I'm blessed enough to know a bit about it & want to continue those traditions (moreso than Olympic-style of the WTF: of which I'm a part, also). I like knowing the Shotokan roots. But the katas that I need to learn are done uniquely from Shotokan. So, my focus is on the way I need to learn them.
> 
> I disagree with many who say most folks don't know what TKD is. I run into too many folks who say, "Oh, my 8 year old grandson is a BB." My focus is on doing & teaching solid TKD Chung Do Kwan & redefining what MA is for a lot of folks. A better TKD than what many are used to.


 
I am with you I teach original TKD the way it was tought to me, regardles of what others may beleive. Yes we do Olympic but opur foundation is Tradition, no doubt about it.


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## tkd1964

OK, here are some quotes from Gen. Choi that I found. 

Tae Kwon Do Times 2000. Interviewed by GM He Young Kimm.

Gen Choi: I thought about learning how to box but my friend, Kim Hyun- Soo, convinced me to watch a Karate class with him at Dong Dai Sa University. A few days afterwards I began to practice Karate.

On his decision to develop TKD from Karate.

Gen Choi: Furturemore, I included the practice of Tang Soo( Karate) as part of the military training regiman. But my conscience felt shame over the decision to teach Karate. As a man, I dispised the Japanese, so how could I teach Karate to my Korean soldiers. This is when I began my research in the martial arts. I wanted to create a new Korean martial art that was based on scientific movements and contained a mentality to fit Korean Soldiers.

1959, during his visit to Taiwan, his answer to General Yu who suggested that maybe TKD was introduced to Korea from China during the Kija Kingdom in a time before the birth of Christ.

Gen. Choi: Yes, China and Korea have been brother nations throughout our history. But TKD is a new Martial Art created by me in 1955. There was no TKD before Christ. ( This was in 1959. I don't see him drawing any ancient history link)

Tae Kwon Do Times March 1986.

Asked about merging Karate and TKD to form one Olympic event.

Gen. Choi: No,no,no, not possible. To be entirely frank, it would be hopeless to merge Karate with TKD. TKD is TKD and Karate is Karate. How can they play together. The rules are different.

Asked about studying Karate and it's influence on TKD.

Gen. Choi: Certainly, certainly. If I didn't know anything about Karate, I wouldn't have invented techniques that are better than Karate or other MA's.

These next ones are from his biography, Taekwon-Do and I. 

A little trivia first. Han Il Dong was not his first calligraphy teacher. Master Ma Do- Sung was. He studied for two years under Master Ma learning Chinese classics and calligraphy.

His second calligraphy teacher was Han Il Dong, lso known as Master Ok- Nam. 

On learning Taek-Kyon:

Gen. Choi: The master was good at one of the Korean traditional MA, Taek-Kyon which mostly incorporated moves of the legs only and had a deep understanding of it. He worriedno less than Father about my weak body, so he talked about most winning fights to boost my morale, *and although it may be at an elementary level, he himself showed me the basic moves of Taek-Kyon.( *doesn't claim to be an expert at this art) 

On his Karate training:

Gen. Choi: During the period I was in Tokyo, for 4-5 years, I put every possible effort into practicing Karate, on top of the school or YMCA buildings, because I had Mr. Huh, whom I fought with the day I left, always on my mind.

If electricity poles could have memories, those in the downtown Tokyo would told you how hard I practiced Karate. In a word, there was no pole which escaped my blows and kicks.

On teaching his friend, Yoon Suk Kim.

Gen. Choi: To end his agony, I recommended that he should learn Karate. After that, for six months, I taught him Karate at a practice hall of a nearby Chuo Univesity, and then, he, too hated to pass on electricity pole without hitting it.

I used the quotes from his Bio last since it is the latest information from General Choi. At no time does he deny his Karate connection. At no time does he claim a 2000 plus year history of Taekwon-Do. This is not second or third person but right from General Choi.


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## tkd1964

Exile, you kill me. You take GM. Kim's word as gold when he speaks of General Choi but you give him a pass when he writes the same thing you are dogging Gen. Choi for, 2000 year history. 
So if GM Kim took what he learned from GM Song and is using that in his style, that OK, but not for the General, Noooooo. ther's no record of him learning that. Have you ever played baseball, football, basketball? I have. Do I know the basics, yes. Is there a record that I learned how to play? No. General Choi said in his Bio he learned the BASICS of Taek-Kyon. Never did he say he was an expert. 
I don't think this is going anywhere so I'll end this now. I've shown that General Choi has not denied his Karate training. I've shown where he doesn't claim a 2000 year history. That's all I can do.

Mike


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Exile, you kill me. You take GM. Kim's word as gold when he speaks of General Choi but you give him a pass when he writes the same thing you are dogging Gen. Choi for, 2000 year history.
> So if GM Kim took what he learned from GM Song and is using that in his style, that OK, but not for the General, Noooooo. ther's no record of him learning that.



I kill you, eh? So you see no difference between  (i) a young, junior MAist echoing the party line, at the very beginning of his MA career, and in the course of forty years of research, writing and study realizing how much mythology and nationalist baggage he was carrying, and correcting his description accordingly, and (ii) a man already powerful, and used to the exerise of that power in pushing his own MA operation, who when his mandate was to purge Korean MA of Japanese influence pushed the Taekyon connection, including making references to someone, supposedly a taekyon instructor&#8212;who would  be on of the few there was around at the time&#8212;whose existence the Taekyon  Association people _themselves_ are dubious about. And who later, in disgrace in Korea, pushed the equally questionable line that he had himself _invented_ TKD, and (trusting StuartA's recollections here) denied that karate had anything to do with TKD.




tkd1964 said:


> Have you ever played baseball, football, basketball? I have. Do I know the basics, yes. Is there a record that I learned how to play? No. General Choi said in his Bio he learned the BASICS of Taek-Kyon. Never did he say he was an expert.



He referred to someone as a teacher, a supposedly very prominent calligrapher, whom no one can find any evidence for, in a part of Korea where taekyon was never practiced (it was, as Song Duk Ki himself emphasized in his book, restricted to an area around Seoul). What does _that_ have to do with learning the basics of _anything_? At a time when Taekyon was widely misinterpreted as (i) ancient and (ii) a combat system, Gen. Choi stressed its formative role in his training. Later on he stressed his single-handed construction of TKD. I've already suggested why both (compatible) stories made sense at the different times he told them.

The General's invocation of Taekyon is a coding for a supposedly ancient lineage for TKD, one that you can find in the postings of a couple of member of this board, and it has long been understood that way in Korea. If you don't want to _see_ the transparent use of it in Gen. Choi's shifting stories, that's fine with me. The fact is, Gm. Kim specifically identifies the story that Gen. Choi was telling _in the 1950s_, in the aftermath of the Korean war. He was there, and as you may have gathered from his interview with Rob McLain, he was in a position to know _exactly_ what General Choi was telling him, his fellow MAists and fellow Koreans. Nothing you've said, not one thing, speaks against that.


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## FieldDiscipline

I know we disagree on this exile, but I believe that there is a native korean influence in the Oh Do Kwan, certainly in the hyung.  Whilst I accept that the chung do kwan, song moo kwan and many others were entirely karate based at there inception.  GM Kim Bok Man says he learned Tosan as a boy.  I have never heard anything about karate from him.  

One day I would like to ask him about Tosan.  I dont believe he would be dishonest though, certainly not in this day and age, having seen what happened to Choi.


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## exile

FieldDiscipline said:


> I know we disagree on this exile, but I believe that there is a native korean influence in the Oh Do Kwan, certainly in the hyung.  Whilst I accept that the chung do kwan, song moo kwan and many others were entirely karate based at there inception.  GM Kim Bok Man says he learned Tosan as a boy.  I have never heard anything about karate from him.
> 
> One day I would like to ask him about Tosan.  I dont believe he would be dishonest though, certainly not in this day and age, having seen what happened to Choi.



Anything you can find out about this, FD, _please_ post. There's not much time left to recover the truth of what went on then from those who were there, and it would be very worthwhile finding out everything you could possibly get from KBM about that. I've heard of Tosan, but I've never been able to run down any detailed description or presentation of its content. So anything, anything at all, would be very informtive and welcome....


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## terryl965

exile said:


> Anything you can find out about this, FD, _please_ post. There's not much time left to recover the truth of what went on then from those who were there, and it would be very worthwhile finding out everything you could possibly get from KBM about that. I've heard of Tosan, but I've never been able to run down any detailed description or presentation of its content. So anything, anything at all, would be very informtive and welcome....


 
I agree FD it would be worth it if you could ask him.


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## tkd1964

exile said:


> who is able to parlay his clout into a paramount position in the South Korean MA scene and, as Gm. Kim points out, bring embarrassingly harsh pressure to bear on dissenters who didn't sign on the Oh Do Kwan dotted line.   .


 
GM Kim never said that. You are reading into it. He said without his protection, the ARMY sent him to the DMZ. General Choi did not and didn't have the power to, plus this was after the armistice, there was no fighting. What harsh pressure??? He didn't want to join the Oh Do Kwan and teach so the Army sent him on his way. I believe most soldiers would be doing their Army service in the DMZ.


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## tkd1964

exile said:


> He referred to someone as a teacher, a supposedly very prominent calligrapher, whom no one can find any evidence for, in a part of Korea where taekyon was never practiced (it was, as Song Duk Ki himself emphasized in his book, restricted to an area around Seoul). What does _that_ have to do with learning the basics of _anything_?
> .


What are you talking about? I gave you his FIRST HAND account of what he learned. Basics is what he said he learned. This is not coming from second or third hand sources but from the man himself. 

You can say it's code adding TK but that is just you reading into it again. Also, you are saying that his calligrapher teacher never exsisted so he is lying about being a calligrapher. Maybe he didn't do all those calligraphy drawings that are hanging in studios around the world. How could he, his calligraphy teacher never exsisted so he couldn't have learned that art. Man, have I been duped.


Mike


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> GM Kim never said that. You are reading into it. He said without his protection, the ARMY sent him to the DMZ. General Choi did not and didn't have the power to, plus this was after the armistice, there was no fighting. What harsh pressure??? He didn't want to join the Oh Do Kwan and teach so the Army sent him on his way. I believe most soldiers would be doing their Army service in the DMZ.



Are we reading the same article???

It was everyone&#8217;s duty to serve in the Army. *General Choi had an important position in the Korean Army and used it to promote his Taekwondo system. *_Anyone with previous training would come before him and be asked to forget their old training and follow his new system. In return, he would be sure they received a good, safe position away from the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone at the 38th parallel)._​
The deal was clear: the default is, you get sent to the DMZ,  the 'hot' zone, (just as the default during the Vietnam War for draftees was service in Vietnam) _unless_ you play ball with the General. And 'no fighting??' I had relatives who were in Korea on active service after the war, and the DMZ was, apart from Berlin, the number one hot spot in the world at that time, with hostilities on the verge of resuming on any number of occasions. It and Berlin were probably the two most dangerous military assignment in the world for a soldier, and the General's OK would get you exempted. Since you're claiming the opposite, why don't you&#8212;and others following this thread&#8212;check out the following inventory of events during a much later, 'cooler' time frame here. Go on, tkd, read it to the end, all the way down, and tell me 'there was no fighting' . And _this _is where a Korean soldier was likely to get pitchforked into in the decade following cessation of active hostilities, because that was where the danger was and where the men were needed to hold back the tide of the enormous North Korean army... unless you played ball with the General, one of the highest-ranking military officers in the country.

And you are _seriously_ suggesting that the General's exercise of his ability to keep you from the high probablilty of being sent up to the DMZ, with your signing on with Oh Do Kwan as the _quid pro quo_, wasn't hardball/armtwisting of the most flagrant kind?? If not, what exactly is your point?


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## exile

First of all, 'there was no fighting there'... see my immediately preceding post, tkd.

Next....



tkd1964 said:


> What are you talking about? I gave you his FIRST HAND account of what he learned. Basics is what he said he learned. This is not coming from second or third hand sources but from the man himself.
> 
> You can say it's code adding TK but that is just you reading into it again. Also, you are saying that his calligrapher teacher never exsisted so he is lying about being a calligrapher. Maybe he didn't do all those calligraphy drawings that are hanging in studios around the world. How could he, his calligraphy teacher never exsisted so he couldn't have learned that art. Man, have I been duped.
> 
> 
> Mike



The official Taekyon group, the people who took Son Duk Ki's skills and turned them into a nouveau martial art, are the ones saying that they have no evidence that the calligraphy teacher he claimed taught him taekyon ever existed. And they've looked _hard_ for him, as Young's article describes. No one in Korea ever heard of the guy. The sole 'evidence' for him is Choi's bio, and no one has been able to confirm that someone of that name even existed. Take it up with the Taekyon Research Association, Steve Capener, and Son Duk Ki himself, who had no clue about this alleged practitioner's existence, as reflected in what he says in his own book.

Now for some basic logic: _saying that someone didn't learn Taekyon from a supposed calligraphy teacher is not the same as saying that they didn't learn calligraphy. _I'd have thought that would be obvious, but apparently not. The general learned calligraphy. What we have no actual evidence for is that he learned it from someone who also taught him taekyon. Savvy?

And now, maybe, can we go back to the OP question? There is a clear culture of denial in TKD so far as its origins in Japanese developments of Okinawan martial arts, compared with the culture of TSD, apparently, which has happily retained a huge percentage of the forms that all but one of the Kwan founders brought back from Japan, where they learned their martial arts. Yet Hwang Kee, the one Kwan founder who never studied in Japan (though he did, we now know from his own last book, learn much of his MA background from books on Japanese karate), seems to have created a tradition which quite happily accepts the realistic characterization of the modern Korean striking arts as Korean karate. I'm curious about what the differences are, why there's this very clear contrast in attitudes. Some very interesting suggestions have been made, and I'm hoping for more input on that point. Anyone?


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## tkd1964

Do you know if anyone tried to ask Gen. Choi himself? He was alive until 2002, very active, not a recluse. Here's alittle help:
He(Han Il Dong) lived in the small district of Boo-Gok (8km away from the city of Mook- Ho) in Mahng Sahng township, Gauhng-Reong province. 

If they didn't try to talk to General Choi, then they really weren't interested.

Mike


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## tkd1964

exile said:


> And now, maybe, can we go back to the OP question? There is a clear culture of denial in TKD so far as its origins in Japanese developments of Okinawan martial arts, compared with the culture of TSD, apparently, which has happily retained a huge percentage of the forms that all but one of the Kwan founders brought back from Japan, where they learned their martial arts. Yet Hwang Kee, the one Kwan founder who never studied in Japan (though he did, we now know from his own last book, learn much of his MA background from books on Japanese karate), seems to have created a tradition which quite happily accepts the realistic characterization of the modern Korean striking arts as Korean karate. I'm curious about what the differences are, why there's this very clear contrast in attitudes. Some very interesting suggestions have been made, and I'm hoping for more input on that point. Anyone?


 
I've already explained, gave you quotes from the General Himself, why he changed the forms. As for the WTF/KKW, I have no idea of their thoughts.


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## FieldDiscipline

I will try to discover what I can regarding Tosan.  It may have to be indirectly as I alas do not have the rank or position to interrogate one of the founders!  I may know someone who can gently ask however.  Unfortunatly these things take time.

I'm somewhat removed from the scene at the mo too sadly.

Exile, would you share what you have heard about Tosan?  Alas I know nothing of it at this time.


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## exile

FieldDiscipline said:


> I will try to discover what I can regarding Tosan.  It may have to be indirectly as I alas do not have the rank or position to interrogate one of the founders!  I may know someone who can gently ask however.  Unfortunatly these things take time.
> 
> I'm somewhat removed from the scene at the mo too sadly.
> 
> Exile, would you share what you have heard about Tosan?  Alas I know nothing of it at this time.



Hi FD&#8212;this is the sum total of it: 

_In 1941, at age 7, Bok Man Kim was introduced to an ancient Korean foot-fighting art, called To-San and spent the following 9 years training daily.
_

(apparently based on this). And there is no cross-link in the bio entry at that point to a discussion of To San. And given the limits on Google's search capabilities, you're really screwed: Tosan, To-San and even "To San" all yield, mostly, texts containing

...*to San* Francisco...​
(Try it, you won't like it... )

Good luck on your search; I think it's worth pursuing&#8212;there are historical gems buried there, deep inside those discouraging trash dumpsters; but the leaders from that era are disappearing fast. There's going to be a lot that we'll never get any further with than conjecture and speculation; the more we can salvage now, the better...


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## FieldDiscipline

Its funny, I looked in the same places!  Google certainly was less than inspiring.  

The text to you which your post refers is also in his books.


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## tkd1964

Now Exile, in no one can find out about this To San let alone find out who his teacher was, are you going to call GM Kim a liar as you pretty much have done to Gen. Choi? And, you can't just take GM Kim's word for it.


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## FieldDiscipline

Grr. Double post!  See below....


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## FieldDiscipline

tkd1964 said:


> Now Exile, in no one can find out about this To San let alone *find out who his teacher was*, are you going to call GM Kim a liar as you pretty much have done to Gen. Choi? And, you can't just take GM Kim's word for it.



Well on that point I may have a very small lead.

The problem with Gen. Choi is over the years he has clearly lied about some things.  This casts reasonable doubt on other things he has said.


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## Sukerkin

*tkd*, whilst your opinions are as valid as anyone elses in a Net debate, I hope you will see that it does not really advance the discussion to make pointed, practically one-liner, argumentative rejoinders to quite well structured research.

I see from your profile that you have not yet gotten around to letting us know a little more of your background - that would help the participants greatly in assessing the 'weight' of your words.


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Now Exile, in no one can find out about this To San let alone find out who his teacher was, are you going to call GM Kim a liar as you pretty much have done to Gen. Choi? And, you can't just take GM Kim's word for it.



I've already asked you once already to stick to topic, tkd. I'll ask you to bear that, and Sukerkin's well-phrased nudge, in mind. 

I don't know what the significance of the name To-San for one of Joon Rhee's ODK hyungs is, FD, but presumably there's a reference there to BMK's 'To San'? Do you have a take on that? There's got to be a connection...

The thing is, HK seems to have been influenced by exposure to Chinese martial systems, in addition to Japanese, but it still didn't translate into denial/hostility of his followers/inheritors towards the karate (component of the) origins of TSD. There seems to have been something extra that went on in the TKD side of things that gave rise to that negative reaction...


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## FieldDiscipline

exile said:


> I don't know what the significance of the name To-San for one of Joon Rhee's ODK hyungs is, FD, but presumably there's a reference there to BMK's 'To San'? Do you have a take on that? There's got to be a connection...
> 
> The thing is, HK seems to have been influenced by exposure to Chinese martial systems, in addition to Japanese, but it still didn't translate into denial/hostility of his followers/inheritors towards the karate (component of the) origins of TSD. There seems to have been something extra that went on in the TKD side of things that gave rise to that negative reaction...



You make a very interesting point regarding Hwang Kee.  I wonder whether this is why he was unpopular with the other kwan representatives during the unification talks.  I consider it concievable of course that he wasnt all that unpopular with anyone but Choi, who had the power to make it seem that way.   Of course that's just unfounded conjecture.

Regarding Jhoon Rhee's hyung I dont know anything about them unfortunately.  Its not possible its another way of writing/pronouncing Dosan?  Chang Hon forms have a Dosan, but according to Gen. Choi it is the pseudonym of the patriot Ahn Chong Ho (1876-1938) who devoted his entire life to furthering the education of Korea and its independence movement. Of course Choi didnt develop the form (but he may have named them, I dont know about this factor).  Hold on, I'm gonna look in KBM's Chun Kuhn Do book, as there may be a reference to this Ahn Chong Ho...


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## FieldDiscipline

Hmm.  Nothing there on Dosan. Or Ahn Chong Ho.

I have never sat and read all of the history in this book.  It is very interesting and I will post further details later when I have had time to look at it further.  

GM Kim refers to many old arts that I never heard of before but doesnt credit them with TKD as such.  He mention Soo Bok and Tae Kyon and says TKD is most similar to Tae Kyon.  He does talk about Japanese (and some Chinese) martial arts and how they were blended with indigenous skills to form new arts like TSD/KSD which later became TKD.  He says that although they are a part, that TKD differs greatly from these Japanese arts. 

Very interesting.  It appears to follow the party line, but also aknowledges the foreign arts (in as much as any Korean soldier is likely to).  No mention is made sadly of his own learning in this section of the book, or of To San.


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## Errant108

Brian R. VanCise said:


> True another fact might be that they do not want to be in a position of making any one, two or three individuals to big in the grand scope of things so that the sport is directly government controlled.  Meaning everyone has to go through them.




The government at the time in South Korea was a military dictatorship.  I have had people tell me of receiving visits by gentlemen at night urging them to follow the party line of that era.  This is why you find masters who had left Korea prior or during that time not following the 2000 year old myth.  Conversely, these masters also saw their influence fade in their native country.


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## Errant108

tkd1964 said:


> General Choi did not and didn't have the power to, plus this was after the armistice, there was no fighting.



There is still fighting today on the DMZ.


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## exile

Errant108 said:


> The government at the time in South Korea was a military dictatorship.  *I have had people tell me of receiving visits by gentlemen at night urging them to follow the party line of that era.  This is why you find masters who had left Korea prior or during that time not following the 2000 year old myth. * Conversely, these masters also saw their influence fade in their native country.



I think this is a big part of the key to my original query.... more latter....


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## tkd1964

Sukerkin said:


> *tkd*, whilst your opinions are as valid as anyone elses in a Net debate, I hope you will see that it does not really advance the discussion to make pointed, practically one-liner, argumentative rejoinders to quite well structured research.
> 
> .


 
By well structured research you mean quoting Mr. Anslow and an interview with GM Kim, that is hardly well structured. Exile printed three snippits that Mr. Anslow wrte in his book. I don't know if this was all he wrote in his book or if he has the whole article peices printed. I asked Mr. Anslow about the articles and he said he doesn't have them anymore. 
As for GM Kims interview, I've read it over and over and GM Kim says Gen Choi brought up the Korean history but doesn't say that General Choi associated that to TKD. We can agree that Gen. Choi was very Nationalistic and wanted an art that the Koreans could be proud of. On the other hand, GM Kim was not Nationalistic and felt that was closedmindedness. I think we can agree that what Gen. Choi was teaching and what GM Kim was teaching were different since GM. Kimm didn't want to change to Gen. Choi's TKD. This is another reason many of the other leaders resented Gen. Choi because they felt what they were teaching(Tang Soo Do, Kong Soo Do) was sound and didn't need to change. 

Now, on Gen. Choi's denial of his roots, again, the articles from Combat mag would be interesting to read and hopefully someone comes up with them for I haven't heard the General deny his roots. I gave quotes directly from his Bio that tell of his Karate days. Maybe Exile feels that because he changed the teachniques he's denying his roots. But what I can tell is that we can agree to disagree on this since the arguement can go on forever.
I bow out.


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> As for GM Kims interview, I've read it over and over and GM Kim says *Gen Choi brought up the Korean history but doesn't say that General Choi associated that to TKD.*





I think further comment is superfluous, at this point...

Now can we _please_ get back to the issue??

For example, here's a hypothesis, picking up on Errant's idea and some of the earlier posts... _the advocates of a given Korean MA style will insist on linking it to a mythical ancient past to a degree of shamelessness corresponding to their location in the Korean MA institutional hierarchy._

This would I think apply correctly to both the top-dog KKW/WTF TKD (in his 1997 _JAMA_ paper, referenced directly, Dakin Burdick cites a typically hair-raising abuse of the archæological material to this effect on the WTF website) and to TSD, banished from the realm with Hwang Kee as a consequence of his institutional quarrel with Gen. Choi; readers who want to see some of the not-very-nice details can find them in Burdick's 1997 article 'People and Events of Taekwondo's formative years', in _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_ 6.1). The interesting test case here would be the official ITF line (or lines, given the fragmentation in the organization). I need to check on this.... more later.

OK&#8212;from their website:

_On April 11th, 1955, the name Taekwon-Do was officially adopted for *the martial art General Choi Hong Hi had developed using elements of the ancient Korean martial art of Taek Kyon and of Shotokan karate, a martial art he had learned while studying in Japan.*_​
So: more of the stuff about the `ancient' (= early 19th century) `Korean' (though in fact played in Japan as well, according to Stuart Culin's 1895 monograph on Korean games) `martial art' (though Son Duk Ki himself, in his book, identifies it as a village competition game, just as Culin characterized it more than a century ago when it was still being played, though it was already disappearing fast). But they also identify TKD as 'the martial art General Choi... had developed'. So, like the General, still having it both ways: ancient Korean roots, and his own personal invention, both.

I'm not sure how the hypothesis I've suggested above should be evaluated with respect to this particular origin myth... any thoughts?


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## tellner

Sukerkin said:


> *tkd*, whilst your opinions are as valid as anyone elses in a Net debate,


With all due respect I have to disagree.

His right to an opinion is undeniable. But when one opinion is supported by careful research, consistent logic and marshaled facts and the other is supported by wishful thinking and appeals to authority they do not have equal validity.


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## jim777

FieldDiscipline said:


> Regarding Jhoon Rhee's hyung I dont know anything about them unfortunately. Its not possible its another way of writing/pronouncing Dosan? Chang Hon forms have a Dosan, but according to Gen. Choi it is the pseudonym of the patriot Ahn Chong Ho (1876-1938) who devoted his entire life to furthering the education of Korea and its independence movement. Of course Choi didnt develop the form (but he may have named them, I dont know about this factor). Hold on, I'm gonna look in KBM's Chun Kuhn Do book, as there may be a reference to this Ahn Chong Ho...


 
I believe this is exactly the case. I have the Jhoon Rhee books (in front of me as I type), and his "To-San" is in fact the Dosan of the Chang H'on forms. The book by GM Rhee is "Tan-Gun and To-San of Tae Kwon Do Hyung", and they are the forms usually spelled Dangun and Dosan nowadays. GM Rhee notes about the pattern To-San "the name of the pattern commemorates the psuedonym of a great Korean patriot and educator An Ch'ang Ho (1876-1938)" on p67 of the book.

jim


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## FieldDiscipline

jim777 said:


> I believe this is exactly the case. I have the Jhoon Rhee books (in front of me as I type), and his "To-San" is in fact the Dosan of the Chang H'on forms. The book by GM Rhee is "Tan-Gun and To-San of Tae Kwon Do Hyung", and they are the forms usually spelled Dangun and Dosan nowadays. GM Rhee notes about the pattern To-San "the name of the pattern commemorates the psuedonym of a great Korean patriot and educator An Ch'ang Ho (1876-1938)" on p67 of the book.
> 
> jim



Nice one, thanks Jim.  Back to the drawing board there I'm afraid then Exile.


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## exile

FieldDiscipline said:


> Nice one, thanks Jim.  Back to the drawing board there I'm afraid then Exile.



Yeah, it's been looking that way... I suspect that the overlap in names is just coincidental, alas. What I find incredibly maddening and frustrating is the fact that the search protocols on Google make it so damned hard to find something called Tosan or To-San, without bringing San Francisco or whatever else into it. Putting " " around it doesn't help either. I'm sure there's information about it out there if one could follow the right search strategy, but this bloody punctuation blindness that afflicts Google makes it all but impossible to use in this kind of search...:angry:


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## Tez3

I tried google (UK one) got these.
http://groups.wfu.edu/Karate-Club/tosan.html





 
http://www.questia.com/googleSchola...KtLpCV3m5zfTms2Tq!1928075767?docId=5002423374

then this but you need to log in and get a pass word to access it.
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/korean_studies/v025/25.1pak.pdf

I don't know if any of that any good at all.


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## exile

Hey, Tez, thanks for your efforts and legwork here. The Tosan alluded to in these vids/texts is a TKD hyung of the Joon Rhee flavor, named after a Korean patriot; but what FieldDiscipline was talking about is some kind of Korean MA, presumably indigenous, that Bok Man Kim is said to have studied, and we're trying to get a fix on what it is... without much luck so far, because it's almost impossible to Google it without the Google syntax protocol interpreting it as the English preposition _to_ followed by the _San_ of _San Francisco_ or whatever. The likelihood is that the overlap with the hyung name, coming as it does from a Korean family name, is purely coincidental. So it looks like a dead end, and  I've no idea (other than FD asking BMK himself, indirectly) how to go about getting more information...


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## JT_the_Ninja

You could try typing it as "dosan." Might also be spelled that way. A couple of the youtube vids seem to have it spelled that way, although I'm not one to say whether or not it's the same form without watching them all, since I don't know it.


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## exile

JT_the_Ninja said:


> You could try typing it as "dosan." Might also be spelled that way. A couple of the youtube vids seem to have it spelled that way, although I'm not one to say whether or not it's the same form without watching them all, since I don't know it.



The problem is, we don't seem to be able to find any discussions of the KMA To-San/Dosan/?, as vs.  the hyung name. And if you type in Dosaneven with no space!you still get hits like '...TaekwonDO in SAN Clemente...' ...it's hopeless!


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## cdunn

exile said:


> The problem is, we don't seem to be able to find any discussions of the KMA To-San/Dosan/?, as vs. the hyung name. And if you type in Dosaneven with no space!you still get hits like '...TaekwonDO in SAN Clemente...' ...it's hopeless!


 
Prefix a word with - to apply the NOT modifier. For example "Dosan martial art -Francisco -Jose -Clemente -Juan -Diego -Antonio -Marcos" is reaping a great deal of information about the hyung, but not very much about the martial art. If you have to, use the 'Advanced Search' link on the google main page as a force multiplier for your google-fu techniques. I also suggest finger tip pushups. 

Also, returning to original topic, I would expect that the relative lack of denial about the roots of the MDK-TSD come from a handful of factors that are unique to the MDK among the Kwans. 

First, the final admission of Hwang Kee as to the source of his hyung, and the retention of those hyung. When I can walk into a Shito ryu or Shotokan dojo and do Naihanchi or Pinan with them step for step and stay 80+% in sync with them, we have to wonder if the roots are the same.

Second, the rejection of unification under Choi's banner, plus the Kwan Jang Nim's staunch resistance of the political factors combined with the diaspora of early dan without (much of) a governing body left very little way to shove something like the Taeguk or the Palgwe through to confuse the first. 

Finally, I know I was straight up told when I started that it was a syncretic art, part Karate, part taekkyon, part kung fu. When it's just one part of many, who cares? The synthesized product is wholly the Kwan Jang Nim's.


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## exile

cdunn said:


> Prefix a word with - to apply the NOT modifier. For example "Dosan martial art -Francisco -Jose -Clemente -Juan -Diego -Antonio -Marcos" is reaping a great deal of information about the hyung, but not very much about the martial art. If you have to, use the 'Advanced Search' link on the google main page as a force multiplier for your google-fu techniques. I also suggest finger tip pushups.
> 
> Also, returning to original topic, I would expect that the relative lack of denial about the roots of the MDK-TSD come from a handful of factors that are unique to the MDK among the Kwans.
> 
> First, the final admission of Hwang Kee as to the source of his hyung, and the retention of those hyung. When I can walk into a Shito ryu or Shotokan dojo and do Naihanchi or Pinan with them step for step and stay 80+% in sync with them, we have to wonder if the roots are the same.
> 
> *Second, the rejection of unification under Choi's banner, plus the Kwan Jang Nim's staunch resistance of the political factors combined with the diaspora of early dan without (much of) a governing body left very little way to shove something like the Taeguk or the Palgwe through to confuse the first.
> *
> 
> Finally, I know I was straight up told when I started that it was a syncretic art, part Karate, part taekkyon, part kung fu. When it's just one part of many, who cares? The synthesized product is wholly the Kwan Jang Nim's.



Much obliged, cd. The bolded part is especially to the point. A good deal of the ROK's effort to promote Korean nationalism through its sports/MA operations involved, as Eric Madis shows in his brilliant recent paper, 'The evolution of Taekwondo from Japanese karate', a conscious and deliberate effort to erase the connection between TKD and its karate origins by 'marginalizing dissent, supporting unification with financial and political incentives, and inventing history and traditions' (in _Martial Arts in the Modern World_, ed. by Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, Westport, Conn./London, UK, 2003). Part of the creation of this spurious `revised history that claimed a 2,000 year, indigenous Korean heritage while obscuring the art's true origins in Japanese karate' was the systematic suppression of the hyungs linking TKD to those origins. Clearly, one of the benefits of exile is that you're no longer under the thumb of any repressive institution or regime you left at home. So in a way, it does make perfect sense to see so much more of that candor I referred to in my original post showing up in TSD, which has become, I'd say, very much an expatriate KMA. The fact that you learned Naihanchi, Bassai and the other forms in the first placethat that was part of your curriculumwas really only possible because of HK's fight to keep the MDK independent of the unification (imposed, as Madis shows, by strongarm carrot-and-stick methods during the Rhee and especially Park military dictatorships) and his eventually, pretty much forced relocation outside the country.


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## tkd1964

exile said:


> I've been wondering about this for quite a while: while it's not unusual for Tang Soo Do people to refer to their art as Korean karate, anyone who does that within Taekwondo is almost certainly going to get a line of flak from representatives of the Korean TKD directorate, or what Lenin would have referred to as their 'useful idiots' in the West, that TKD is a purely Korean art, has no substantial debt to Shotokan or other Japanese karate styles, and represents a significantly different fighting _system_ from karate.
> 
> 
> 
> You'd think, given HK's own clear, conscious rejection of what he knew to be truethe Japanese origins of his own 'core' hyungsthat TSD culture would have developed the nationalist mythology of TKD's 'ancient Korean' origins to a much greater degree than TKD (after all, Song Moo Kwan is an almost literal translation of _Shotokan_how much more candid can you _get??_)  .


 
Sorry Exile, but I had to say this. Look at the monicre for Tang Soo Do at the top of the page. I just think it's funny. :roflmao:
Sorry, back to being serious now.

Mike


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## exile

tkd1964 said:


> Sorry Exile, but I had to say this. Look at the monicre for Tang Soo Do at the top of the page. I just think it's funny. :roflmao:
> Sorry, back to being serious now.
> 
> Mike



Actually, there's a story about that... check with Upnorthkyosa for the scoop. Here's a clue: check out the heading for the Superior Tangsoodo sponsored forum (which is Upnorth's dojang)  and, um, compare the two... :wink1:


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## SageGhost83

.....Well, I was seriously thinking about chiming in about the whole GM Kim and Gen. Choi thing, but Exile good buddy, you pretty much nailed it again. Being familiar with the formation of our art and the environment that it was forged in is one of the reasons why we just don't go along with the party line in Korea. Yes, it is a cool story, and yes, there are many people who blindly adhere to it because, well, it is cool to be connected to the Korean Samurai-like Hwarang through such a story :wink1::lol:. However, when so much careful, thoroughly researched, painstakingly peer reviewed information has been presented to the contrary, it seems just a tad bit silly to continue defending the party line with little more than appeals to authority.

Well, on to more important issues - I think that the brutal, repressive nature of the government at the time coupled with the almost street gang like nature of the kwan era may explain why Koreans hold the party line - there may have literally been a real life threat of being executed for going against that party line and presenting the truth. So that would make the motivation for continuing to deny the roots of the art and buying into the fabricated origins not just nationalist, but also fear-based. Thankfully, things are changing and the TKD community is slowly, if stubbornly, accepting the truth about our art's origins. The TKD community is also realizing that accepting the truth doesn't make TKD any less awesome :bangahead:.


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## StuartA

exile said:


> That's not what the denial in question consists of. If Stuart's recollection is correct, he most definitely _did_ deny his karate links in his final _Combat_ interview. I am attempting to locate microfische records of the journal and expect to be able to turn it up in the next little while, and then we shall see, eh?


If you ever come across these or anyone has the original copies I will try to gain permission to (re)publish them in a future volume. I am gutted I couldnt do it for Vol 1, but alas thats how life transpired. I moved many years ago and boxed them up (all my years of martial art mags - hundreds of them), as I moved into a flat I asked a friend to store them in the loft of his (then new) house, many years later, whilst he was away on business his wife decided to do a clear out. As he hadnt done martial arts for a number of years she must had presumed they were his, taking up space and off they went 

That said I do clearly recall the shift of acknowledgement as I found it strange each time I read a new interview.. hence it stuck with me. If I wasnt sure I wouldnt have mentioned it in the book as there are other things I heard that Im not 100% on and hence didnt put them in print.

Maybe, just maybe Combat magazine stores computerized copies of them (the interviews).. I doubt they do after all these years but I will ask if I ever get the chance.

Stuart


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