I've never seen the Combat interview, But I didn't see how Gen. Choi changed his story. He wanted to change the Tang Soo Do that the Koreans were learning. He developed new Patterns with the assistence of his black belts. He has stated in the past that without learning Karate, he would never have developed TKD. Gen. Choi was Brazen when it came to two things, Japanese and the WTF. But again, in all the articles and interviews I've read , he has never changed his story on TKD(2000 yrs old and so on).
There were three
Combat interviews:
1970s: Without karate there would have been no Taekwon-do
1980s: Karate was simply a reference tool that helped
early 1990s: Karate had only a minor or no impact on Taekwon-do/Karate has nothing to do with Taekwon-do
(
Ch'ang Hon Taekwon-fo Hae Sul, by Stuart Anslow, 2006, Diggory Press (Cornwall, UK), p.11).
You don't see this as a 'change of story'?
Or, as per the interview I gave you a link to with Gm. Kim:
In the early days he was teaching the same karate forms as the other kwans, such as Pyung Ahn, Bassai Tae, Kon Sang Kun, etc. Then in the late 1950’s he came up with a story about martial arts links to Korguryo dynasty, Silla Dynasty, 2000 years of tradition, etc.He created new forms and gave each form a name related to something in Korean history, such as a scholar’s name or a famous Korean patriot’s name. He called his system, “Taekwondo.” He was trying to get away from the connection to the Japanese - trying to make something patriotic. He wanted everyone to follow this new line and give up their previous training.
Gm. Kim—who published the first book on the Palgwes when they were first created (heavily based on the Pinan kata set) and was a Kwan leader and the senior instructor in the Chung Moo Kwan, and later a Kwan leader in the Kwang-duk Kwan, in the late 1950s—was, as his
BB interview makes explicit, approached on several occasions by Gen. Choi and urged to change affiliation to the Oh Do Kwan. He was an insider on the scene during the formative Kwan era, and knew exactly who was teaching what, what their background in the MAs was, their connections to the Japanese karate scene, and so on.
He is telling you that Gen. Choi started off with the same curriculum as everyone else, derived, like everyone else (except Hwang Kee) from either Shotokan or Shukokan karate, and then, later on in the post-Korean War era, began to elaborate this legend of TKD's 'ancient' origins.
In view of Gen. Choi's own words and the testimony I've cited from one of those who was 'present at the creation', so to speak, are you really going to try to maintain that he was telling the same story over the four decades following the Korean War?
I also want to forestall red-herring objections along the lines I've already suggested, that in bringing these contradictions into the discussion I'm dishonoring the memory of a great man, or some such line. The underlying issue that drove my OP here has to do with the distinctly different technical approaches, on the part of many TSDers on the one hand and the 'official' Korean TKD directorate line on the other, to what were at one time the hyungs trained in common by the two groups. I was perplexed by the candor with which many TSD people seem to accept the O/J antecents of their art,
in spite of the fact that Hwang Kee alone among the original five Kwan founders didn't study in Japan, compared with the denial of this connection that became a leitmotif of 'official' TKD in the post-Kwan era, with Gen. Choi arguably the first and most prominent example. The issue is important not as an obscure bit of ancient sectarian history, but because the different outlooks inform the technical approach to the hyungs practiced by TSD and TKD respectively. The discussion so far has suggested some interesting reasons why this split in attitude might have occurred, and leads me to suspect that dojangs which—in defiance of the dictates of TKD Central in Seoul—maintain their separate Kwan identity and links to their original curricula are also going to take a different approch to 'reading' hyungs, and deciphering their interpretations and applications, than those which identify completely with the canonical KKW curriculum. In the development of this discussion, I'm making no value judgments on Gen. Choi's revisionism; but to deny it strikes me as
very wishful thinking.
) But remember, Gen. Choi was the dominant political force in TKD between the Korean War and the end of the Park military dictatorship; if there was pressure being supplied, I suspect he was on the initiating end rather than the receiving end. He spent time in a Japanese prison for his anti-occupation activities, and his life was probably in real danger, and in spite of the hosility engendered towards him in Korea by his trip to the North, he strikes me as a genuine Korean patriot. Given the nature of his actions in the Korean War epoch to further the Oh Do Kwan at the expense of its competitors Kwans, as Gm. Kim reports in the sources I mentioned, his revisionist management of TKD history seems almost incidental... and there were probably plenty of others in Korea who were in sympathy with his anti-Japanese attitudes in connection with the MAs. So it's probably a bit of this and a bit of that....
