# Forum description



## Cirdan (Aug 24, 2007)

> *Tang Soo Do* Tang Soo Do is a Korean martial art which teaches empty hand and foot fighting, fighting forms, self-defense, and weapons. Tang Soo Do also teaches people to live a healthy and harmonious life. *This ancient martial art traces its lineage back 2,000 years to the Korean peninsula.*


 
Please....


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## FieldDiscipline (Aug 24, 2007)

(Lights touchpaper and retires to a safe distance...)


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## MBuzzy (Aug 24, 2007)

I'm not touching this one.....I can see this thread being one of those that goes on for 12 pages.


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## shesulsa (Aug 24, 2007)

*Admin Note:*

Folks, if you have an issue with the description of a forum, please bring it up in the Member Support forum or PM a member of the staff.

If you'd like to debate the origins of Tang Soo Do, then there may be a better way to word your post accordingly and perhaps start another thread topic.

In the meantime, the staff have taken the complaint under advisement - please know this process could take a little while.

G Ketchmark / shesulsa
MT Assist. Administrator


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## Cirdan (Aug 24, 2007)

shesulsa said:


> *Admin Note:*
> 
> Folks, if you have an issue with the description of a forum, please bring it up in the Member Support forum or PM a member of the staff.
> 
> ...


 
Yes, perhaps I should have written a bit more, but it the roots of the KMAs have been discussed at great lenght in the general korean arts forum the last several months. The 2000 year old Korean lineage of TSD and TKD is a myth created for commercial purposes and has absolutely no solid facts to support it. Honestly, if the Karate forum description said "Karate belts gain colour over time going from white to yellow, orange green, brown and finally black from the sweat and dirt they absorb during years of training" I would make a similar post there. I am not complaining, merely pointing a finger at something that does not add up. If you find my post offensive, by all means delete it.


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## Touch Of Death (Aug 24, 2007)

Cirdan said:


> Yes, perhaps I should have written a bit more, but it the roots of the KMAs have been discussed at great lenght in the general korean arts forum the last several months. The 2000 year old Korean lineage of TSD and TKD is a myth created for commercial purposes and has absolutely no solid facts to support it. Honestly, if the Karate forum description said "Karate belts gain colour over time going from white to yellow, orange green, brown and finally black from the sweat and dirt they absorb during years of training" I would make a similar post there. I am not complaining, merely pointing a finger at something that does not add up. If you find my post offensive, by all means delete it.


What were they using 2005 years ago?
Sean


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## Cirdan (Aug 24, 2007)

Touch Of Death said:


> What were they using 2005 years ago?
> Sean


 
Harsh language I suppose :uhyeah:

(edit) In the case you were serious, the old Korean arts does not appear to have had any influence on the creation of TSD.


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## Makalakumu (Aug 24, 2007)

I've had the same problem with the forum description, but since I train in the style and I respect a lot of people who may still believe this, I choose to say nothing.  Instead, I attempt to make my own practice different.

This is my hosted forum on MT.

Here is the description that I think fits our art...



> Tangsoodo is a Korean martial art that incorporates techniques from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Directly translated, Tangsoodo means Way of the China Hand. We train to improve our character, express ourselves creatively, and to defend ourselves should combat arise. Our training consists of the following types of techniques - 50% striking, 20% grappling/throwing, 20% weapons defense, and 10% breathing/relaxation/energy work.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 24, 2007)

I take descriptions from what I can find, we've changed em before, and I'm always happy to update things as needed.  Y'all want to discuss a more accurate/appropriate description, go for it.  

That's what keeps this place cool


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## Makalakumu (Aug 24, 2007)

Bob Hubbard said:


> I take descriptions from what I can find, we've changed em before, and I'm always happy to update things as needed. Y'all want to discuss a more accurate/appropriate description, go for it.
> 
> That's what keeps this place cool


 
This is actually a great way to deal with it.  And I don't think that Bob can really be faulted for going for what he did.  This forum description has been up for a long long time, almost since martial talk was created.  At that time, the information that we know now wasn't as widely known.  The expansion of the internet has changed all of that and forums like this have been at the forefront of that wave.


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## Makalakumu (Aug 24, 2007)

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=747

So, I went digging into all of the threads that were here way back when I joined MT and I found the above.  There is a lot of good stuff here including a good challenge to the 2000 year claim.  Maybe Cirdan, this thread will pull in a series of other discussions on this topic and we can crank out a better description right here and now...


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## exile (Aug 24, 2007)

upnorthkyosa said:


> http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=747
> 
> So, I went digging into all of the threads that were here way back when I joined MT and I found the above.  There is a lot of good stuff here including a good challenge to the 2000 year claim.  Maybe Cirdan, this thread will pull in a series of other discussions on this topic and we can crank out a better description right here and now...



Guys... the whole 2000 year claim is based on exactly the same non-evidence that people who claim a technical lineage going back to the Three Kingdoms era for Taekwondo base _their_ claims on: archæological, philological and documentary evidence whose invocation on behalf of these ancient claims has been thoroughly debunked in genuinely scholarly, peer-reviewed historical sources. I'm beginning to feel a bit like a broken record, but the following, assembled from different posts I wrote earlier in different contexts, contains the crucial discussions pertinent to the decisive debunkings of these separate bits of evidence (stuff from these earlier posts is in italics): 

(i) the physical evidence: 

_In one of his papers on the origins of Taekwondo, for example, Dakin Burdick notes that 

Although Taekwondo is a modern art, many Korean practitioners claim that the art began in the Koguryo dynasty (c. 37 B.C.). They claim that various Koguryo dynasty royal tombs contain murals of men practicing Taekwondo. Interpretation of these postures, which seems to be mere wishful thinking, apparently began with Tatashi Saito's "Study of Culture in Ancient Korea." Saito said that:

"The painting either shows us that the person buried in the tomb practiced Taekwondo while he was alive or it tells us that people practiced it, along with dancing and singing, for the purpose of consoling the dead."

None of the Koguryo tomb murals can be definitively identified as the practice of a kicking & striking art. The murals on the ceiling of the Muyong- chong are said to show "two men practicing a sort of Taekwondo." They actually show two men -- both with goatee, moustache and long hair -- wearing loin cloths. They are at least four feet apart (their outstretched hands are a foot away from each other). The positions could be stretching, dancing, or possibly wrestling Mongolian style, but they certainly do not resemble modern Taekwondo stances or techniques.

The ceiling of Sambo-chong shows a man in deep horse stance who appears to be pushing the walls apart. The WTF claims that this is "Poomse practicing of Taekwondo," something that would be hard to determine from a single figure, and certainly not the simplest explanation of the position. Similarly, the paintings on the ceiling of Kakchu-chong shows two men either dancing or Mongolian wrestling (the figures date from the age of San-Sang, the tenth King of Koguryo), but Dr. Lee Sun Kun (President of Kyung Puk University) tries to say that the mural "shows sparring of Soo Bak."

(See article at http://budosportcopelle.ml/gesch.html)

The absurdity of this kind of long post-hoc rationale for such claims emerges especially clearly when one learns that, according to Burdick `the martial arts depicted in Koguryo tomb murals closely resemble those in the tomb murals of the Eastern Han, located in what is now eastern China. This suggests that the form of Koguryo era martial arts emerged because of Chinese cultural influence, rather than independent development by the future Koreans'. (See Burdick's 1997 version of this paper, `People and events of Taekwondo's formative years' in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts)

Of the second-most-often cited piece of material evidence bearing on the existence of an ancient Korean combat system which contributed tothe current MAs TKD/TSD, Burdick comments that `the statue of Kumkang-Yuksa at Sokkuram, which is often cited as the figure of an ancient warrior practicing taekwondo, is in fact a Buddhist guardian figure found throughout East Asia, and thus cannot be said to be unique to Korea either.' (1997 paper.) Stanley Henning's 2000 JAMA article `Traditional Korean Martial Arts' echoes this observation, noting that these guardians are in the style common to contemporary Tang China (618907), on which they were most assuredly modeled. Even some reputable Korean sources refer to these figures as `wrestlers' rather than `boxers', but they are most commonly called `strong men' (lishi in Chinese or ryuksa in Korean).'

(p.10; my emphasis). The problems these historians have exposed with the interpretation of the physical evidence involved are general in nature: how do you know what's being depicted? Consider the fact that it's not only the WTF claiming this physical evidence on behalf of the art it promotes and to a large extent controls; we also find exactly the same archæological artefacts invoked by Kang Uk Kee (Tang Soo Do: The Ultimate Guide to the Korean Martial Art, Orange, CA: Unique Publications, 1998, pp.812) on behalf of Tang Soo Do, and by Hui Son Choe (Hapkido: The Korean Martial Art of Self Defense, Thousand Oaks, CA: Hui Son Choe Publishing, p.8) on behalf of Hapkido!!. You can imagine TKD and TSD claiming the same physical evidencethey're fraternal if not identical twins, split from the same Moo Duk Kwan in the mid/late 1950s, but Hapkido?? 

When claims are made about the history or technique of a particular MA, the general requirement of meeting a burden of proof applies as much as it does anywhere else. The claim that TKD has a 2000or 1000 or 500 or whateveryear old history is subject to the requirement that there be positive evidence making the likelihood of the claim superior to the alternative, that TKD is no more than 70 or 80 years old, say. _

(ii) The documentary evidence:

_One of the frequently repeated bits of evidence intended to meet the burden of proof for the `ancient KMA' assertion has been, for a long time, the Muye Dobu Tong Ji. It's worth pointing out at this point that the MDTJ says almost nothing about empty hand techssomething pointed out in the in-depth scholarly literature on the subject I've cited, but not in [a recent BB magazine article claiming an ancient lineage for TSD based in part on the MDTJ] nor in virtually any of the KMA texts I've read which allude to it; the sheer fact of this book's existence seems to be taken as sufficient evidence for ancient indigenous empty-handed techs somehow ancestral to those in modern TKD. But let that go, for the moment; the point is, the MDTJ is, as Dakin Burdick observed in his 1997 JAMA article, one of the three pillars of the claim for the roots of modern KMA in a distant antiquity....

What we now have is a body of detailed, linguistically and philologically well-informed critical literature which has shownby meticulous side-by-side textual examination of both the MDTJ and several other still earlier Asian treatises on combat techniquesthat the MDTJ is in essence a literal translation of a Chinese military text written ten generations before the MDTJ appeared. The content thus represents Chinese weapon and their use, Chinese strategic and tactical concepts, and is in effect a presentation in the Korean language of a substantial chunk of Chinese military culture and practice. There is no martial content in the MDTJ which does not appear firstby 250 years!in the New Book of Effective Discipline. Exhaustive documentation for this claim is provided by the JAMA articles by Burdick, Henning and Androgué [2003: `"Ancient Military Manuals and Their Relation to Modern Korean Martial Arts'] The conclusion which followsand note, by `conclusion', I mean nothing other than a deduction based on the total set of available evidenceis that the MDTJ, by virtue of its completely Han military content, has no bearing on the antiquity of modern KMA's origins, and therefore fails to meet the burden of proof for any claims that these origins are ancient.

In order to restore the MDTJ as a source meeting that burden of proof, it would be necessary for supporters of ancient KMA to counter the translations, analyses and documentation of the scholars I've cited, at the same or a superior level of detail. Burdick, Henning and Androgué have amassed an enormous body of evidence on behalf of their assessment of the MDTJ's provenience and content. To meet the burden of proof for the CLAIM that [the MDTJ has any relevance to an ancient lineage for modern KMAs] would require a demonstration, at the same level of detail, that a book with completely Chinese content tells us something about the KMAs. If the MDTJ is, as the mass of evidence alluded to substantiates, a manual, written in Korean, consisting of Chinese military techniques taken text-for-text from a Chinese source, then the default inference is that the KMAs of the time consisted of Chinese military techniques, a point discussed in detail in Burdick's article. In other words, the claim that the MDTJ most clearly does support is that, at the time it was written, Korean military techniques were the same as those practiced throughout the vast Han empire 250 years earlier. To try to use the MDTJ to support the existence of an ancient (or even contemporary) native KMA set of traditions, a rather crushing burden of proof therefore needs to be met._

(iii) the philological evidence is discussed in Stanley Henning's 2000 _JAMA_ paper, `Traditional Korean Martial Arts', focusing on the misidentification of _taekkyon_ with early documentary references to _takkyon_ `push-shoulders'; see also Marc Tedeschi and the erroneous belief that terms like subak and takkyon refer to specific techniques, rather than generic tactics of unbalancing, striking etc. 

The point of all of this is just that the supposed evidence which is hauled out at various points by advocates of ancient KMAs, including TSD, turns out to offer no support at all for such claims. The status of a two-millenia history for any of these arts is roughly comparable to claims that Atlantis really existed, or that the moon is made of ice. The status of this evidence is on the table, offered publically in the only strictly refereed journal of MA history we have, representing a convergence of lines of investigation by independent historians, and so far there has not been a single peep in contradiction to their joint critique, let alone anything like well-reasoned argumentation undermining their results. Given that situation, what's left to discuss, at this point?


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## FieldDiscipline (Aug 25, 2007)

Why do you people have to ruin everything? :wah:

On a serious note, does anyone remember seeing writings on here stating that Hwang Kee had nothing to do with Gichin Funakoshi and his japanese influence all came through books?  Can anyone verify this?  Sorry if I've got wires crossed, no offense intended!


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## Makalakumu (Aug 25, 2007)

FieldDiscipline said:


> Why do you people have to ruin everything? :wah:
> 
> On a serious note, does anyone remember seeing writings on here stating that Hwang Kee had nothing to do with Gichin Funakoshi and his japanese influence all came through books? Can anyone verify this? Sorry if I've got wires crossed, no offense intended!


 
In the 1995 version of Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan Volume 1, Hwang Kee writes that he learned all of the classical hyungs from books.  There is no documented evidence of him ever training in Shotokan directly Funakoshi.  Although it has been demonstrated that he had about two years instruction from Won Kuk Lee who was a 2nd dan in Shotokan.


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## shesulsa (Aug 25, 2007)

Any final decision yet?


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## Makalakumu (Aug 25, 2007)

shesulsa said:


> Any final decision yet?


 
G. I've been kinda waiting to see what other TSD people have to say because the way I practice TSD is not like the bulk of other tangsoodoin out there.  But I'll throw this out to at least get the ball rolling...

"Tangsoodo is a modern Korean martial art that incorporates techniques from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Directly translated, Tangsoodo means Way of the China Hand.

What (if anything) would you add to this?  Or is this even remotely sufficient?


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## Makalakumu (Aug 27, 2007)

upnorthkyosa said:


> "Tangsoodo is a modern Korean martial art that incorporates techniques from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Directly translated, Tangsoodo means Way of the China Hand.


 
I would like to emphasize the fact that TSD tends to focus more on kicking techniques then regular karate, so I'm going to edit the last line with...

"...and is in many ways exactly like kare-te, however TSD tends to emphasize kicking techniques."

Thus the new forum description would read...

"Tangsoodo is a modern Korean martial art that incorporates techniques from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Directly translated, Tangsoodo means Way of the China Hand" and is in many ways exactly like kara-te, however TSD tends to emphasize kicking techniques."

Thoughts?


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## exile (Aug 27, 2007)

upnorthkyosa said:


> "Tangsoodo is a modern Korean martial art that incorporates techniques from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Directly translated, Tangsoodo means Way of the China Hand" and is in many ways exactly like kara-te, however TSD tends to emphasize kicking techniques."
> 
> Thoughts?



As an interested, sympathetic outsider whose TKD style, Song Moo Kwan, nonetheless seems _very_ closely related to TSD (as you also have noted here, UpN), I just want to say that this looks very good to me. And I think that making this kind of change (even in something as seemingly small as a forum description), reflecting our current understanding of KMA history, is a very positive contribution to the high level of intellectual integrity that this board strives for.


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## Makalakumu (Oct 13, 2007)

Could we change the general TSD forum description to this...



> Tang Soo Do is a modern Korean martial art that incorporates techniques from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Directly translated, Tang Soo Do means &#8220;Way of the China Hand."  Like its parent art Kara-te, Tang Soo Do is primarily a striking art, but it also incorporates throwing and grappling techniques and a variety of weapons.  Tang Soo Do shares many other similarities to kara-te but tends to emphasize kicking techniques.


 
If anyone would like to add or subtract anything, please do so or forever hold your peace.


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## Lisa (Oct 13, 2007)

upnorthkyosa said:


> Could we change the general TSD forum description to this...
> 
> 
> 
> If anyone would like to add or subtract anything, please do so or forever hold your peace.



upnorth,

Lets leave this here for a few days and see if there are any changes, etc.  Then please pm an admin and we will take it into consideration.

Thanks.


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