Article: The TKD Billion Dollar Smokescreen

[GenshinKiDojo]

I know plenty about the misconceptions that exist in Tae Kwon Do's history, as I said, I like history. I also know a fair bit about the misconceptions in Karate's history. And not just martial arts, what most people believe as there countries history is full of myths and lies as well. Why you feel the need to single out TKD for a crime that your style is guilty of as well is beyond me.

** last post for today

ok - if we can talk peacefully, I look forward to talking with you in the future at some point. I rather not be instigated or attacked in anyway.

we can disagree - we are allowed to have perspectives. Facts are facts and our perspectives on if these are actual facts looks like what the problem is.

Regarding Isshinryu History. Andrew with all due respect, I would tend to believe a 8th or 9th Dan in Isshinryu over you.

I think you might tend to believe Jhoon Rhee over my comments on TKD right?

So we are even.

Till next time my friend!

 

[Andrew Green]

1954 or 1956 as the creation date?

I submit exhibit A, a photo taken on the date that it became Isshin ryu, pay attention to the date:



As I said, I check my facts before presenting them as such. I am not attacking you, just your facts. Which seem to be the core of your argument against TKD.

 

[GenshinKiDojo]

Tradition, you will find very few karate instructors, especially Japanese / Okinawan ones that refer to themselves in that way. Japanese / Okinawan culture would consider it extremely poor form.

The word "Master" is, as you say, not Japanese or Korean. It is English, a western addition, one that is most common in Tae Kwon Do in my experience and I believe has a Korean equivalent, where as there is no Japanese equivalent in use.

Yet you seem to reject western additions and commercialization.

And just for interest, Tatsuo Shimabuku, teaching "sport fighting":
View attachment 8850


History and tradition seem important too you as way of preserving the martial arts, yet you seem selective as too which ones you consider important.

Sport fighting is a part of Isshin ryu's history, right from the beginning, yet you reject it. why?

For the love of sweet Jesus Andrew let it rest!

I am 100% anti sport.. see my website on MY perspective on a 50/50 balance.

compete? if someone likes to spar sure we can grapple, spar whatever. I do that with students.

I told you - 80% Isshinryu schools in the world compete.

they compete as Martial sportist.

A 1st dan black belt Martial artist and a 1st Dan black belt sportist are not the same.

ego Andrew.. it's called huge EGO and it kills people.

disagree with someone on the street and mouth off..

do you think they won't hesitate to knife you or shoot you?

You can say "I would never do that" look at the attacks on me here and I'm answering you all night trying to be friendly.

You attack one after the other.

 

[GenshinKiDojo]

1954 or 1956 as the creation date?

I submit exhibit A, a photo taken on the date that it became Isshin ryu, pay attention to the date:

View attachment 8851

As I said, I check my facts before presenting them as such. I am not attacking you, just your facts. Which seem to be the core of your argument against TKD.

Andrew - come on - I really don't know if you missed this post I sent before or are doing it on purpose. below I cut and pasted my post to you a couple hours ago when you asked me the SAME question..

******* below my earlier reply to your Isshinryu info **
well.. Andrew Green - I hate to be the one to tell you this, but everything you say above is incorrect. How many years do you have in Isshinryu karate?

I have 32 years sir. I also disagree with Isshinryu schools that do sports competitions - I feel it's counter productive.

That's how I feel. (my perspective)

your mis information about Ku san ku kata is 100% wrong. Shimabuku developed it 100% on his own from the empty hand Ku san ku kata.

Do a little more internet research and you'll find 40 seperate variations of any Isshinryu kata out there and meanings.

So it's easy to try and discredit anyone.

wow you really are hellbent on degrading me in anyway you can.. lol it's amusing really. I see again how your TKD twisting is working here.

Where did you get this bogus information?

The Tonfa kata is the same. read my website that's the facts.

I felt it might be best not to mention 500 variations on the Isshinryu kata facts - I hope that meets your approval. That might have confused the public.

If you wish to dispute any Isshinryu facts why don't you debate it with a higher Dan then I because it wouldn't be as fun would it? Having someone else tell you your incorrect goes against your reasons for trying to discredit me to begin with.

regarding your rediculas claims on a 2 year period about Isshinryu being formed?

Compare this:

TKD says 50 BC on hundreds of websites..

but it was 1955 TKD then changed in 1960 Tae Soo Do, then official in 1965 TKD again

but from 45 to 55 the kwans mostly called it TKD some did and some didn't..

so when was it Andrew?

let's not get silly here about a couple years.

we can say TKD was 100% not from 50 BC and Isshinryu was 1954 - 56 if you like?

**********

 

[exile]

Bob,
My perspective on Martial arts / sports today is that everyone is so rushed to say they are a black belt or want to say they are the bigest and badest.

That is definitely true, lots of people promoting themselves to ranks they shouldn't have and claiming titles that don't fit.

:lol: Nice one, Andy!

I want to revisit Mr. Whitney's text, reported in the OP for this thread, and just briefly assess—using publically available documentation—just how badly Mr. W., who keeps going on about `facts', has gotten the factual story wrong beyond all recognition. Let's just focus on the statement

The public needs to be aware that Tae Kwon Do IS NOT a Martial art and NEVER was.

and start with

... and NEVER was

• General Choi, who trained to a second dan in Shotokan under Gichin Funakoshi's direction, organized the Korean military after the Liberation and made the martial art he learned—which he and other Kwan founders eventually named Taekwondo—the standard H2H combative system for all RoK infantry starting around the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. No other national military has ever adopted a single TMA—the Korean variant of karate—as a combat standard, so far as I am aware.

• The Black Tiger commandos in the Korean War, and the White Tiger commandos in Vietnam, who were trained in this version of TKD, were feared by their enemies to such an extent that the VC field command in Vietnam in 1966 directed their troops to avoid contact with the Koreans specifically because of their TKD combat ability. At the Battle of Tra Binh Binh Dong a year, the RoK 11th Marine division imposed heavy casualties on a much larger force of North Vietnamese and broke their attack, leading to promotion of every single member of the division by a full rank. See my post here for documentation, including news stories from TIME magazine and the newsletter of the U.S. Marine Corps; details and reprints are given Stuart Anslow's recent book on bunkai for the ITF hyungs.

• To the extent that a battlefield combative system is successful, it has to be contrued as an effective SD system under the most extreme conditions. Since TKD (in a form still currently widely practiced by both MAists following both ITF and KKW technical content; see below), proved itself on the battlefield as a CQ fighting system to a greater extent than any other contemporary TMA, it satisfied any possible demand that a fighting system be combat-effective to qualify for the description `Martial Art'.​

So much for the historical accuracy of the claim that TKD `never was' a Martial Art. Let's now go on to

TKD is not a martial art...

• The technical content of TKD, derived almost entirely from the Shotokan and Shudokan styles of karate, is maintained in its formal patterns, its hyungs, which encode exactly the same combat applications recoverable from the karate kata which gave rise to TKD. In my dojang, for example, we learn the Kichos (essentially identical to the Shotokan/Okinawan Taikyoku katas), the Palgwes (heavily indebted to the Pinan/Heian katas), and in addition to a number of black belt hyungs derived from Japanese sources, several Okinawan katas including Rohai, Bassai and Naihanchi.

• In an increasing number of dojangs, these forms are analyzed for combat application using methods pioneered by Rick Clark (Seventy-five Down Blocks), Bill Burgar (Five Years, One Kata) and especially Iain Abernethy (Bunkai-Jutsu: the Practical Application of Karate Kata), extracting combat-effective fighting techs form both the KKW and ITF hyungs and training them under`live', severely non-compliant conditions.

• As I pointed out in an earlier post to Mr. Whitney, which he apparently failed to absorb, I myself have trained for several years in a Song Moo Kwan (a literal translation into Korean of Shoto kan `Waving pine tree martial training house') which employs hand, forearm and elbow strikes to the throat, carotid sinus, temple and eyes, trains neck breaks and spinal attacks using elbows, and breaking attacks to collarbones.

• A detailed series of newsletters written by Simon O'Neil, the appropriately named Combat TKD series, available by subscription at http://www.combat-tkd.com/Ctkd1/home.php, demonstrates combat applications of TKD using multiple head strikes, damaging attacks to the throat, nose and eyes, and neck breaks, employing pins, locks and other controlling moves to set up these terminal strikes.

• A very similar set of applications and attacks, using a similar strategic approach, clearly derived from O/J karate, is found in Stuart Anslow's 2006 book on street combat-effective bunkai for ITF hyungs.

• Anslow's Rayner's Lane dojang is affiliated with the British Combat Association, probably the largest national organization devoted to the realistic application under street-attack conditions of the full spectrum of MAs, including Asian TMAs, headed by the eight-dan karateka and experienced streetfighter Peter Consterdine. The TKD component of the BCA, and of Iain Abernethy's BCA-affiliated bunkai-jutsu network of MA schools and practitioners, is one of the fastest-grown components of that network.​

None of the TKD schools, dojangs or practitioners mentioned here focus primarily, or at all, on tournament competition; they are all heavily invested in live training of TKD techs for unsought, but unavoidable street violence. To the extent that a traditional fighting system contains a rich set of combat applications, and makes those applications available to practitioners willing to train them for street conditions, to that extent it must count as a martial art, as opposed to sport.

That, I think, fairly tidily disposes of Mr. Whitney's credibility insofar as he associates himself (100%, as I recall) with the statement in the OP on the website registered in his name.

Finally, I note that the Issinryu World Karate Association just held its 2007 world championship tournament, with 614 participants, according to the official tournament website at http://www.isshin-ryu.com/iwka_2007.htm In numerous books on realistic bunkai methods for karate, such as those by Iain Abernethy and Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder, we are repeatedly reminded that light-impact, spectacular kicks and other favored scoring methods have little or nothing to do with realistic combat methods inherent in karate's technical content, and over and over again see authors contrast `sport karate' with realistic CQ karate applications. It appears, then, that Issinryu and other forms of karate reflect a major split between sport and combat applications little different in kind from that within the Korean variant of karate called TKD.

I bring these points up just to offer some further ammunition to my friends and colleagues on MT that they might want to avail themselves of should they ever encounter claims, based in profound ignorance as a rule, that TKD is a sport, not an effective fighting system. Unfortunately, there are all too many people who know nothing about TKD running about, telling other people who also know nothing about TKD the kind of nonsense that the OP in this thread cited from Mr. Whitney's website. In some cases, my experience has been, people will when confronted with well-documented evidence of the kind I've alluded to, readjust their ideas to a more realistic picture of TKD. There are others who may be incapable of doing so and in that case... well, you tried. Remember what Schiller told us as a general maxim: Against stupidity, the Gods Themselves contend in vain.
What he was getting at, I think, is that sometimes it's just not worth the bother...

 

[MJS]

Admin Note:

Despite 2 warnings to keep things on a civil, respectful level, the personal attacks and rude posts continue.

Thread locked pending review.

Mike Slosek
MT Asst. Admin