# The history of Korean Martial Arts?



## geocad (Apr 25, 2007)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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## Dave Leverich (Apr 25, 2007)

One, two, three, not it!

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


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## Ninjamom (Apr 25, 2007)

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

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

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

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


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## exile (Apr 25, 2007)

Ninjamom said:


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



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

I've assembled some of the most important results that KMA historians have worked out on the basis of the whole set of evidence available&#8212;archaeological, textual and etymological, in the following posts:

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

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

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

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

I recently had a useful encounter with the difference between legendary and real history myself. After passing on the standard folklore about Mas Oyama's practice of stunning, and in a few cases killing, fierce fighting bulls in unarmed combat, I was prompted by my ever-skeptical MT friend Brian van Cise to reexamine the record and see if there were any truth to this story. It turns out that there is an extensive interview with one of Oyama's most senior students and inheritors of his kyokushin karate mantle, Jon Bluming, who stated flatly that Oyama had `fought' a bull only once, that the `bull' was actually an ox, obviously frightened&#8212;JB emphasized that oxen are treated kindly, as pets, in the Japanese countryside, and are not used to being mistreated&#8212;that Oyama did not kill the ox but did hurt it, that he, Bluming, thought this was abominable, and that Oyama himself felt bad about the publicity stunt (which he admitted it was) and never did it again&#8212;and yet, newspaper and web biographies have him injuring a couple of dozen or more angry bulls and killing three outright. So much fake media hype, and this is within living memory&#8212;and then we're expected to accept vague rumor about events going back hundreds or even thousands of years in the Three Kingdoms era??? 

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


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## Ninjamom (Apr 26, 2007)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



			
				Hamels' journal 
Translated by Henny Savenije said:
			
		

> The army
> For the defense of the country there are several thousands of soldiers in the capital, both cavalry and infantry. They are maintained by the king. Their duty is to guard the king and protect him if he goes out. Each province is obliged to send all its free men, once every seven years to the capital, to guard the palace of the king during two months; every two months another group and each year another province.
> 
> Each province has a general who has three to four colonels below him. Below each colonel are a number of captains, who are commanders of a city or a stronghold. Each ward has a sergeant, each village a corporal and at the head of each group of ten men is a soldier first class. All officers and noncommissioned officers have to keep records with the names of all the men who falls under his command. These records have to be handed over to their superiors once a year. In this way, the king always knows how many soldiers he has at his disposal.
> ...



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

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

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


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## exile (Apr 26, 2007)

Ninjamom said:


> I just read through that old thread that detailed all your research in the history of Korean MA's.  Wow!  How did I miss that the first time around??!?!  Thank you for posting and linking back to that discussion.
> 
> Just to add a little more fuel to the fire, I would like to point out a few things:
> 
> ...



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


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## exile (Apr 26, 2007)

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


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## Brian R. VanCise (Apr 26, 2007)

exile said:


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


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


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## Ninjamom (Apr 26, 2007)

exile said:


> (i) there is no connection between 19th c. taekkyon and the takkyon alluded to in certain relatively early documentation of Korean fighting arts;


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

Good call!



> (ii) there is no reliable evidence that taekkyon played any kind of significant role in the formation of the kwan-era arts that provided the _entire_ technical basis of modern TKD and TSD;


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


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## exile (Apr 26, 2007)

Ninjamom said:


> I get around that finer nuance merely by being an incredibly poor speller, and managing to spell both names incorrectly
> 
> Good call!
> 
> Drat! Now I have _homework_! I was always under the impression that at least one of the major Kwan founders had studied Taekyon extensively.



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

_At first, I went to the bookstore to find information about Tae kyun. There was no Tae kyun remaining or being taught in those days after the Japanese occupation. Just my neighbor Song Duk-ki had any experience with it. I found an old book that had a poem by a Yi Dynasty poet named Mei Hwah Sun. He wrote about a friendly competition called &#8220;Tae kyun&#8221; held during the Dan Oh Festival during the month of May. That was the first thing I found at the bookstore._

The Japanese occupation actually began in the last decade of the 19th c., so taekkyon seems to have been effectively dead by the time Gen. Choi would have been in a position to learn it&#8212;though there's a good deal of question as to what there was to actually learn; as Steve Capener observes in a very important, very thoroughly documented paper, `Problems in the identity and philosophy of T'aegwondo and their historical causes' (available at http://winstonstableford.com/identity.html),

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

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

By the time Gen. Choi appeared on the scene, there thus seems to have been almost nothing left of what, in itself, doesn't appear to have been an actual martial art so much as a kind of foot-wrestling/kicking game of a kind described elsewhere in northern Asia and amongst the Inuit across N. America and Siberia. There really is no good evidence for either Gen. Choi or Hwang Kee, the other Kwan founder usually identified with early training in taekkyon, having actually `done' taekkyon&#8212;as Capener and others have suggested, it apparently wasn't so much a martial art as a kicking game; HK's verifiable training seems to have been in a Japanese adaptation of Okinawan Goju-ryu under Gogen Yamaguchi, a Japanese intelligence operative,  when both of them were posted to Manchuria in the late 1930s, as Burdick (2000) documents in the paper at http://www.budosportcapelle.nl/gesch.html

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


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

*GMKS:* In the early days he was teaching the same karate forms as the other kwans, such as Pyung Ahn, Bassai Tae, Kon Sang Kun, etc. Then in the late 1950&#8217;s he came up with a story about martial arts links to Korguryo dynasty, Silla Dynasty, 2000 years of tradition, etc.  _

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


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## Dave Leverich (Apr 26, 2007)

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

Thank you all, you've given much!


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## JWLuiza (Apr 26, 2007)

Ack!

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

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


Kudos to NinjaMom and the rest of you.

-John


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## shesulsa (Apr 26, 2007)

Dave Leverich said:


> I'm in awe.
> Honestly, this kind of thread, with these kinds of discourse... it's the entire reason I went looking for martial forums.
> 
> Thank you all, you've given much!


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

Kudos to all you folks!


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## geocad (Apr 26, 2007)

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

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

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

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

Maybe WHRDA MAs can answer this question?

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

Thanks again!!

Farang


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## bluemtn (Apr 26, 2007)

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


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## exile (Apr 26, 2007)

Brian R. VanCise said:


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



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

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



shesulsa said:


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



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

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


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## howard (Apr 27, 2007)

Ninjamom said:


> I would say that the modern Hwa Rang Do is completely made in modern times, largely from Shotokan Karate...


Sorry, but no... Hwarangdo comes mostly from Hapkido, with additional elements from Chinese arts.  Lee Joo Bang was a student of Choi Yong Sool at some point.  He called what he taught "Hapkido" when he first came to the US.  He invented the Hwarangdo history somewhere along the line.  You should take it with a sackful of salt.

Hwarangdo bears little resemblance to Shotokan.


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## Dave Leverich (Apr 27, 2007)

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


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## shesulsa (Apr 27, 2007)

howard said:


> Sorry, but no... Hwarangdo comes mostly from Hapkido, with additional elements from Chinese arts.  Lee Joo Bang was a student of Choi Yong Sool at some point.  He called what he taught "Hapkido" when he first came to the US.  He invented the Hwarangdo history somewhere along the line.  You should take it with a sackful of salt.


I do believe I've posted www.hwarang.org before - folks might be seriously interested in this page.  There are many accounts of Do Joo Nim training with people who later (after having been visited by him) stated he never did.  It does make one wonder ....



> Hwarangdo bears little resemblance to Shotokan.


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


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## JWLuiza (Apr 30, 2007)

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

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

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

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


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## Swallow (May 29, 2007)

What do you think about this article: [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]_Ancient Military Manuals                              and Their Relation to Modern Korean Martial Arts_,  published in the  Journal                              of Asian Martial Arts, Vol. 12, Num. 4, noviembre                              2003.:

http://www.taekwon.com.ar/a.pdf
http://www.taekwon.com.ar/b.pdf
http://www.taekwon.com.ar/c.pdf
http://www.taekwon.com.ar/d.pdf

Swallow
[/FONT]


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## exile (May 29, 2007)

Swallowthis important article's final conclusion

_From an historical perspective, it becomes apparent that any appeal to the Muye Dobu Tong Ji as evidence for the antiquity of any Korean modern art is unacceptable today_

is 100% in line with the findings of Stan Henning and Dakin Burdick in earlier articles in  _JAMA_. And the author's conclusion that `the nationalistic arguments that have so frequently distorted the historical truth can no longer be accepted' is completely consonant with that of these other historians and a reminder that when we give up what the historical record shows in favor of our own fantasy-yearnings, we dishonor the dead. The historical record offers our best shot at reconstructing the _fact of the matter_ that was the historical reality that previous generations lived through. Whether we like that reality or not, we've no right at all to thrust it aside on the basis of whatever nursery stories feed our hopes and aspirations for the MA we practice.

The soundness of the scholarship here is outstanding. Eventually, maybe, we'll stop getting these pathetic appeals to the _Muye Dobu Tong Ji_ to document the nonexistent centuries(or millenia)-old `origin' of modern KMAs along the lines of the pathetic article on the TSD/TKD history in the current issue of _Black Belt_, as well as several dozen poorly researched introductory chapters of TKD and TSD handbooks. Meanwhile, thanks for posting those links!


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## Last Fearner (Aug 9, 2007)

exile said:


> I recently had a useful encounter with the difference between legendary and real history myself. After passing on the standard folklore about Mas Oyama's practice of stunning, and in a few cases killing, fierce fighting bulls in unarmed combat, I was prompted by my ever-skeptical MT friend Brian van Cise to reexamine the record and see if there were any truth to this story.


 


exile said:


> It turns out that there is an extensive interview with one of Oyama's most senior students and inheritors of his kyokushin karate mantle, *Jon Bluming, who stated* flatly that *Oyama had `fought' a bull only once*, that the `bull' was actually an ox, obviously frightened&#8212;JB emphasized that oxen are treated kindly, as pets, in the Japanese countryside, and are not used to being mistreated&#8212;*that Oyama did not kill the ox but did hurt it*, that he, Bluming, thought this was abominable, and that Oyama himself felt bad about the publicity stunt (which he admitted it was) and never did it again&#8212;and *yet, newspaper and web biographies have him injuring a couple of dozen or more angry bulls and killing three outright*.


 
According to personal accounts written in his book on Karate, &#8220;What is Karate&#8221; (published in 1963), Master Masutatsu Oyama had heard a legend of a Karate Master of the past having killed a bull with one stroke.  He used this legend as a motivation for his training.  Although he was born in Korea, he went to Japan to study aviation.

*&#8220;Korea had produced her first pilot (whose name was Shin) and the youths of my fatherland aspired to become a pilot like him.&#8221; &#8220;Harboring this ambition, in 1938, when I was fifteen years old. I went to Japan by myself.&#8221;*

Being rejected as an &#8220;unwanted Korean,&#8221; he found it difficult to find a room to rent. Eventually he did, and attended college. At college he became interested in Karate, and sought out the best instructor in Japan, Mr. Giko Funakoshi.

*&#8220;I wanted a good instructor and called at the Shot-Kan (a Karate school) operated by Mr. Giko Funakoshi who was then considered the veteran master of Karate. He was the second son of Master Gichin Funakoshi who introduced Karate to Japan from Okinawa.&#8221;*

With the end of World War II, Oyama became excited about the prospects of a liberated Korea. However, the civil war between North and South Korea discouraged him. He became politically involved to make a difference, but was soon met with frustration over the corruption of politics.
On the advice of a mentor, and Karate master, Oyama retreated to the Mountains for solitude and training.

*&#8220;When I was driven almost to self-ruin, Mr. So Nei-Chu, an elder of my native province, rescued me from the crisis. Mr. So, a thinker and master of Karate, was a rare man of character and confidence.&#8221;*
_*&#8220;When I was at my wit's end as to what to do and went to see him, Mr. So, after encouraging me, said, 'You had better withdraw from the world. Seek solace in nature. Retreat to some lone mountain hide-out to train your mind and body'.&#8221; *_

He was joined by a student of his, and they trained very hard every day. The solitude was more challenging to them mentally than the physical demands, and the student eventually ran away one night.

*&#8220;For us, during the first one or two months the wind sounded as Satan's footsteps; we had nightmares and were awakened many times.&#8221; &#8220;We endured it, though, in this isolated heart of the mountain.&#8221;*
_*&#8220;We rose at five in the morning, trained ourselves by running up and down the steep hill, practiced Seiken-tsuki two thousand times against the stumps of trees around us, and broke sprigs down with Shuto, looking upon them as opponents.&#8221;*_
_*&#8220;I bore all this, but my pupil could not. One night he finally ran away from the mountain solitude in secret, and I was left alone.&#8221;*_

Oyama stuck to his mission with one goal in mind, to become the best Karateist in Japan.

*&#8220;I was once told that a master of Karate had killed a fierce bull with one stroke of his fist. There is no knowing whether it is true or not, but before I entered this mountain retreat, I shaved my hair off intending in my mind to obtain the power and technique to accomplish such a feat before my hair grew long again.&#8221;*

Oyama had planned to stay in the mountain for three years, but inescapable circumstances forced him to come down after a year and a half. &#8220;In 1947, he entered the All Japan Karate Championship Tournament in Kyoto, and became the champion, but one thing remained on his mind.

*&#8220;Although I was acclaimed the number one Karateist in Japan, my earlier desire to repeat the ancient master's feat of striking down a bull with one blow of the fist still remained.&#8221;*

He visited a local slaughter-house, and asked to test his Karate skills on one of their bulls. Of course, they thought he was crazy, but he finally convinced them to let him have a bull.

*&#8220;The bull appeared to weight about 1,000 pounds. First I posed the right Seiken and with a yell, gave one stroke on its brow. Though my stroke took effect, the bull, bleeding from the nostril and mouth, began to run amuck instead of falling down, I was unable to approach it for another stroke. With remorse, I left the slaughter-house still with expectation of success some day.&#8221;*

He began to make daily visits to the slaughter-house.

*&#8220;I started off first by breaking the horns of smaller bulls, later graduating to bigger ones.&#8221;*

Meanwhile, a friend of Oyama's, who was a film-maker, wanted to make a movie with Oyama called, &#8220;Karate Vs. Fierce Bull.&#8221; This motivated Oyama train harder.

*&#8220; I was all the more encouraged by this. I studied bulls, experimenting on more than fifty head of cattle as to how to dodge a fierce onrushing bull.&#8221;*

When it came time to do the filming at the Yawata coast of Tateyama in Chiba Prefecture, Oyama felt prepared, but the bull they presented was larger than he expected (this was not the tame "ox" of a later event, but a regular fierce bull). He recounts the day's event in the following edited excerpts:

*&#8220;On the day of the filming upon looking at the bull the movie company had brought, I was frightened. It was a large bull weighing about 1,250 pounds with a horn 10 inches long and 3 inches round at the base.&#8221; &#8220;I swiftly dodged its attack right and left, and finally grasped it by the horns.&#8221; &#8220;Suddenly I missed my footing and fell on my back.&#8221; &#8220;Though I recovered quickly, my skin was torn from abdomen to breast. The blood flowed, but I felt no pain.&#8221; &#8220;Gradually, however, I felt my opponent becoming tired. The moment I noticed this, I twisted the bull strongly to the left with all my might, taking advantage of its strength.&#8221; &#8220;With a yell I struck at the base of the horn. The bull groaned; its horn, broken at the root, was hanging down from its forehead. I pulled the horn out of the forehead and unconsciously held it up high over my head.&#8221; &#8220;I had conquered the bull.&#8221;* (the book's version lasts much longer in more grueling detail of vicious struggle lasting more than 30 minutes)

In this portion of his story, there is no specific mention of &#8220;killing&#8221; the bull, but in a later passage, he mentions that he did in fact kill this bull, *and* another one at a less favorable event.

*&#8220;On November 11th 1956, I was supposed to have a fight with a fierce bull at the Denen Colosseum in Tokyo. However, it was foreordained to be a difficult and unsuccessful fight as the approval of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Board read, 'You will neither hit nor kill the bull.' I had planned to snap the horns of the bull as it dashed toward me by using 'Karate' and this was the publicity which had been issued by the promoters.&#8221; A desperate struggle between man and bull was going to take place this evening, so the customers had been led to believe.&#8221;*
*&#8220;The 1,200 pound bull selected as my opponent was named 'Rai-den-Go.' This was larger than one I had previously killed at Tateyama City, Chiba Prefecture -- the first bull I had killed after training for such an encounter.&#8221; &#8220;At Tateyama, the fight lasted more than 30 minutes before the bull was killed. In Contrast, it took only three minutes this time, and it was far from an epoch-making fight between man and animal. 'Fake!' cried the spectators, and it was natural that they shouted thus. 'Give us our money back, you big swindler!'&#8221;*
_*&#8220;As for myself, I stood bewildered with all this, for it was I who had proceeded to this stadium with more thrilling expectation than anyone else. The point I feel that I must make clear is that although the exhibition was a big failure, I was neither a fake nor an imposter.&#8221;*_

It seems that Oyama had more problems than a reluctant bull/ox which was easily defeated.

*&#8220;Before this exhibition was to take place, a letter had been sent to the Metropolitan Police Board from a stranger, which read as follows; 'Oyama will not abide by your ultimatum. He will start a fight after giving the bull an injection shot to make him excited. A desperate struggle will ensue accordingly. Being excited, the bull will charge Oyama. The result will be just as Oyama wishes. He will then hit the bull and kill it under the excuse of 'self-defense'.&#8221; &#8220;The Metropolitan Police Board thereupon sent about 50 detectives to the stadium to see that this prediction did not come true.&#8221;*

In addition to this, Oyama's troubles with this event extended further into embarrassment, and financial burden.

*&#8220;There were three promoters for this exhibition...&#8221; &#8220;None of these promoters appeared at the stadium that night because of a dispute among themselves in connection with receiving profits from the exhibition. Shirking their responsibility, who was left to be manager of the exhibition at the stadium? It was I, -- Oyama 7th grade Karateist, the contestant. I had to be the manager and promoter, I had to assume responsibility for others' failures.&#8221;*
_*&#8220;The exhibition did not benefit me a farthing. Who in the world was a fake and a swindler? Oyama, 7th grade Karateiest, was beaten untidily at the colosseum by promoters. I assumed 270,000 yen of debt on behalf of those who actually committed the fake.&#8221;*_

In spite of the poorly planned exhibition, and rumors of fraud and deception, Oyama had indeed killed another bull with his bare hands. Although he had misgivings about the event, he harbored no resentment towards those who had done him wrong.

*&#8220;Musashi Miyamoto, great swordsman whom I deeply admire, once said, 'I have no jealousy of others; I have no resentment, no hatred of them as long as I know that I have put forth my own best effort.&#8221; &#8220;That fatal evening two years ago I received some unfortunate publicity for others' irresponsibility. I hold no resentment or hatred for I put forth my own best effort.&#8221;*

Master Masutatsu Oyama was capable of demonstrating the awesome power of his hands.

*&#8220;People often look at me incredulously if I say, 'A bare hand can crack a stone weighing about twenty pounds.' I once broke such a stone before some newspaper men, who were quite astounded by what they had seen&#8221;*
_*&#8220;I have also broken the powerful horns of sixty or seventy large bulls. This, I may say unequivocally, is a record unequaled by anyone else.&#8221;*_

Although his story might seem a bit off topic, I think it is relevant to note that, as much as we might believe we have debunked the frauds, and accomplished &#8220;myth busting&#8221; when it comes to history and events of the past, it seems that the most recent version of the &#8220;real history&#8221; is only valid until a newer version comes along. Was there only *one bull fight*? Photos in his book show two distinctly different bulls on two separate dates ( &#8220;Raiden Go&#8221; being the one that looked more like a domesticated ox/bull - - I would scan and post the photos, but it would probably violate their copyright). Was the struggle between man and beast more of a myth and a legend than fact? I don't know. I wasn't there. However, lacking any proof to the contrary, I am willing to accept the accounts as described in Master Oyama's own words. 



exile said:


> So much fake media hype, and this is within living memory&#8212;and then we're expected to accept vague rumor about events going back hundreds or even thousands of years in the Three Kingdoms era???


 
Did we really just experience a myth debunking, or was the original story more true than the version of de-mystificaton?


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## exile (Aug 9, 2007)

Last Fearner said:


> Although his story might seem a bit off topic...



Hi LF, thanks for that very interesting account, and no, I don't think the story is off-topic in the least. Although it probably wasn't exactly what you were aiming at, it helps to make my point and strengthens it still further. 

We have, with the history of the past century, a whole bunch of accounts of what MO's combat with male cattle consisted of. There are stories in which he slew them barehanded on a regular basis (check out his 52 dead bulls at http://www.masutatsuoyama.com/masoyama.htm... did he set up a program killing one a week for a year?? :lol, stories in which he slew one or two, the recollections of John Bluming, his close personal friend and senior student, and Oyama himself, and they _all differ_ in detail, sometimes wildly. This is in an age when literacy is widespread, media coverage blankets the world, and the performances in question were supposedly public... and we still can't get the story straight. This something that supposedly happened only a tad more than half a century ago. The war was over, Japan was full of observers... and everyone has a different story: no dead bulls, a couple of dead bulls, a whole herd of dead bulls... how are we supposed to decide on what should be a very simple historical question?

Does Oyama's own account have a privileged position in this mass of mutually contradictory stories? Hardly. We have excellent evidence that some of them most prominent pioneers of the MAs made important statements about their arts that can be easily disconfirmed, sometimes in their own words. Gen. Choi gave three interviews in _Combat_ magazine, one the '70s, one in the '80s, and one in the '90s, in the first of which, as Stuart Anslow notes, he identified Shotokan karate as having been absolutely essential to the development of TKD, and in the last of which he claims that Shotokan played _no_ role in the development of TKD, with the '80s interview taking a middle position (for an interesting discussion of other self-contradictions on the General's part, take a look at Rob Mclain's interview with Gm. Syung-Poo Kim in our own _MT Magazine_.) This is Gen. Choi contradicting  _himself!!_&#8212;no matter how you slice it, he said two incompatible things at different times, backing each of them with his own experience, memory and authority. Or take Hwang Kee, who claimed to have invented the Pyung-Ahn hyungs at one point, but later admitted that he had learned them from their Japanese Heian ources (not surprising, given that the Pinans that became the Heians in Japan were constructed by Anko Itosu _two decades  or so before Hwang Kee was born._ Or the claim that he had invented the Kichos, which again are nothing more than the Taikyoku katas of Shotokan, with a couple of minor modifications (the Taikyoku have been attributed variously to Funakoshi and to his son, but there is evidence for them in indigenous Okinawan styles such as Gojo-ryu&#8212;what is clear is that they definitely predate Hwang Kee's martial arts training by quite a long time!) And there are many, many more such examples. Self-reports and claims by major figures writing for public consumption are not guaranteed to be any more reliable than any other kind of statement.

In a previous discussion, when I alluded to some of these points, you appeared to be indignant that I was accusing these pioneer figures in the karate-based arts of lying, but as I tried to explain in a reply to that post, nothing could be further from my mind, because I take very seriously the distinction between `private truth' and `public truth' which is very common in Japan and other extremely hierarchical Asian societies, and in Japanese is virtually inscribed into the vocabulary: _honne_, one's own views and perceptions of the situation, vs. _tatemae[.I], or the official story, the one that one wants others to believe. I think I may have cited Bruce Clayton's characterization of the difference as follows:

It confounds the naïve Western reader to discover that respected Japanese sensei casually conceal, distort or fabricate stories about karate's historical origins for their own purposes. In Japanese culture this is the normal thing to do, and it would not occur to them to do otherwise. In Japan, the official story is more important than the actual truth. *In fact, they consider the official story to be another kind of truth, even if the stroy is completely inaccurate and deliberately misleading.*For a person to question the official story is shockingly rude. People who insist on digging for verifiable facts are derided asrikutsuppoi,or `reason freaks'​
(Clayton, Shotokan's Secret, pp. 31&#8211;32, citing Karel Van Wolfram's magisterial 1989 work on Japanese culture and history, The Enigma of Japanese Power, emphasizing Chapter 4 of KvW's book `The Management of Reality.') My Korean graduate students, whom I've discussed this distinction with, agree that something very similar operates across much of their own society, and I suspect it's a cross-national, cross-ethnic cultural trait of many Asian societies. The point is, here is Oyama, operating as a self-acculturated Japanese of Korean origin, in a society in which face and honor are all-important to both success and self-respect in life, telling a story about himself for the public record, a situation in which he is in a position to determine the tatemae, as per normal cultural practice. I've no confidence whatever, given those facts, that his account is more accurate than Bluming's, I'm afraid.

But the crucial point is that it doesn't really matter: we have so much historical indeterminacy here that all we can do, in a sense, is close the book and say, we don't really know what happened. And this is just two generations back!




Last Fearner said:



			I think it is relevant to note that, as much as we might believe we have debunked the frauds, and accomplished &#8220;myth busting&#8221; when it comes to history and events of the past, it seems that the most recent version of the &#8220;real history&#8221; is only valid until a newer version comes along. Was there only *one bull fight*? Photos in his book show two distinctly different bulls on two separate dates ( &#8220;Raiden Go&#8221; being the one that looked more like a domesticated ox/bull - - I would scan and post the photos, but it would probably violate their copyright). Was the struggle between man and beast more of a myth and a legend than fact? I don't know. I wasn't there. However, lacking any proof to the contrary, I am willing to accept the accounts as described in Master Oyama's own words.
		
Click to expand...

 
All valid questions! But as per my preceding comments, I don't believe there is any more reason to believe MO's own words in the absence of confirmation. Witnesses in court, trying to portrey themselves in their best light, are not accorded any special privileged position among alternative account; that's the whole point of cross-examination&#8212;or, as it works in historical research, searching for converging documentation and multiple lines of evidence. 




Last Fearner said:



			Did we really just experience a myth debunking, or was the original story more true than the version of de-mystificaton?
		
Click to expand...


Yes, that is the question. But the larger point&#8212;the way in which even very recent MA history quickly becomes a tangle of unverifiable stories, anecdotes, legends and much else, blocking our access to a genuinely well-founded factual account&#8212;is amply supported by everything you've cited, and that was my larger point in connection with attempting to go back many centuries, or millenia, where the problem&#8212;given the lack of documentation&#8212;will be increased exponentially._


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