Thanks for going over those points for me Exile. I particularly find the information regarding the legality of practicing TK during the occupation very interesting.
It has become clear to me the difference in techniques between your SMK pediree and my to be confirmed/Oh Do Kwan/Chung Do Kwan background.
It seems the SMK you do really is exactly what it says on the tin, shotokan translated. My TKD does contain some additional techs that could arguably be TK related, ie pushing kicks. I never saw these during my time training shotokan. I think that these are pretty tenuous links though and it is pretty undeniable that what is todays TKD is predominantly sourced through Shotokan.
SMK does have a reputation for being heavily—very heavily—Shotokan based. But here's the funny thing: Byung Jik Ro, our Kwan founder, decided that Gen. Choi had the right idea early on, and actually scrapped the original Shotokan/SMK curriculum in favor of the General's at one point! But then a new set of forms was developed by one of BJR's senior students, the Chung Bong hyung set, which are sometimes referred to as the 'lost forms' of TKD; in most of the SMK lineages, apparently, the original curriculum was restored, with some adopting the new Chang Bong set and some, like mine, readopting the Shotokan-based syllabus. So far as this new set of hyungs is concerned, Frankovich (
here) has this to say about them:
Tae Kwon Do Song Moo Kwan was on of the original eight kwans recognized by the Korean government in 1945. Song Moo Kwan, the Pine Tree School, was founded by Byung Jik Ro in Seoul shortly after World War II and was one of the kwans that followed in General Choi's attempt to unify the Korean martial arts under the name Tae Kwon Do. Grandmaster Ro had trained with the Shotokan Karate founder, Gichin Funakoshi. When Song Moo Kwan was first taught, Grandmaster Ro used the forms that were taught to him by Funakoshi. When the kwans began to appear, each had its own philosophy and teachings. One concept that made Song Moo Kwan different from the others is that they felt that many of the techniques were being taught incorrectly because the hips were not involved enough while doing the techniques. After the unification of the kwans, Grandmaster Ro started to teach the poomse that had been developed by General Choi. These were used, and still are by some Song Moo Kwan instructors, until 1974 when a student of Grandmaster Ro designed the Chung Bong poomse. Master Jay Hyon had come to Minneapolis, MN in the early 1960's and set up the Karate Center. Master Hyon developed the Chung Bong poomse, which he introduced to his students, and replaced the poomse of General Choi. It is still unclear if these poomse have become the "official" poomse of Song Moo Kwan, but even today the Grandmaster's son Hee Sang Ro teaches them at the dojang (training hall) after Master Hyon retired from teaching. These poomse have become a very valuable training method for many students, unfortunately Master Hyon only developed seven poomse before his retirement.
These poomse are very unique in the fact that they introduce techniques sooner than their counterparts from other kwans and that they use "intermediate" stances for moving into a follow-up technique.
Now these forms are completely unknown to my SMK lineage, through Gm. Joon Pye Choi, one of BJK's last senior students. So there is evidence of a major lineage fragmentation there, I'd say... I was completely floored when my instructor called my attention to these forms and asked me to help him locate information on them. There actually are videos of these forms (
here)... seven forms I'd no idea about, in my own Kwan, that are apparently used as the basis for testing and promotion in a different lineage, that I'd no clue about. You can never tell what's just around the corner, eh? I kind of like that... it's always nice to be reminded that one lives in a world where neat things you never suspected can happen.
It is a shame. TKD's history has it all, why be so ashamed of it? I remain convinced that my TKD has some native elements within it, but the similarities are just too clear. Its futile denying it really, especially given Won Kuk Lee and all the other pioneers who trained in Japan.
I agree, but think of it this way: every MA is a transmutation of its input elements, and the result is genuinely different and valuable in each case. Karate started in Okinawa as a mix of native tuite elements and (probably) Fukien White Crane (maybe other stuff as well),
possibly with an admixture of bujutsu element that had 'leaked over' from the Satsuma overlords. It got to Japan, where a lot of the early students of the Okinwan expats had had some school exposure to jujitsu; then on the Karate, where a whole different approach to kicking kicked in—sorry, couldn't help it
—because—based on the full-power open-hip method of striking, where hip rotation drives the torque of the strike much more than it does in the Japanese forms. So on top of the skeleton of karate techniques we've inherited, we also have a very powerful set of kicking strikes added to the technique pool inherited ultimately from Japanese karate. I also agree with you, FD, that there is a native element in TKD, but my take is, it's not a specific technique set that was contributed, but rather a fondness for kicking, for use of the legs as offensive weapons. If you look at taekkyon, for example—which was also practiced in Japan, accoring to Stuart Culin's late 19th century ethnographic description—what stands out is the fact that the art is primarily a throwing, unbalancing game in which the legs are actively recruited, both to unbalance below and to help supply the pushing force above that tips the opponent over. It's actually a kind of vertical grappling which involves the legs heavily as thrusting elements to supply the push that tips the unbalanced oppo to the ground. I've seen Mongolian wrestling performances and read about how they work, and something similar is going on but thrusts driven by the legs aren't used as unbalancing weapons to nearly the same degree (though the Hulunbuir style also encourages the same kind of lower-body leg strikes to unbalance that taekkyon does, and leg grabs as parts of throws are mandatory in the Halh style... clearly there's a northern Asian cultural practice involved here, with plenty of local variation; it even goes up into the Arctic, though the rules change a good deal on the way. The Koreans work the legs more than anyone else does). The most realistic assessment of the situation I think is that both taekkyon and TKD, though fundamentally different in critical ways, are both manifestions of the Korea adherence to a belief in the effectiveness of leg techniques in whatever it is they're trying to do.
The real key, I think, is training. And here's where I see the problem: what if you want to teach people TKD from a self-defense, non-sport angle? What do you do? That's a tricky problem for curriculum design, especially given the number of young children who are typically enrolled in a dojang and provide a lot of its operating revenue. For most people, self-defense applications are going to be much more personally useful than sparring—I myself don't find sparring very interesting, in the same way that I don't find lacrosse or basketball all that interesting, to either watch or to do—but teaching serious self-defense is a very dicey proposition, especially for kids but also for adults (simply because it forces them to visualize the prospect of having to actually
fight for their lives in dangerous situations). I see the pendulum of the TMAs swinging back to serious self-defense, but there are some built-in hurdles there, most definitely...
But I think, as
Steel Tiger has said, that TKDists have reason to feel very good about what they have accomplished in the history of this modern Korean art. And I also think that it's important to realize that at this point, the way Americans, or Canadians, or the British or continental Europeans develop TKD is a legitimate dimension in its growth. TKD is a lot more than just what the Korean directorate decides it is.
