You can see that the mats are being torn rather than cleanly cut, mainly because the cuts aren't clean.To Daniel Sullivan: What makes the tameshigiri sub-par in your eyes?
I will quote my post from page one regarding Master Jeong's cutting demo:
The video above shows Master Joung engaging in a Tameshigiri demo. Aside from not being overwhelmed by it, it tells me very little of the art. While it's harder than it looks to do well, the fact is that you've got a three foot razor blade, so cutting rolled up mats isn't really all that hard and demonstrates nothing of they system.
One note on what I saw was that he was never able to successfully cut the bundles of multiple rolls and the thrusting his short sword into the target and leaving it so that he could cut it to pieces with his long sword was just plain silly.
I have no opinion of the system whatsoever. If you are willing to put up videos of yourself, that is fine and good, but unless the material is going to tell me more about the system than about your own cutting ability (which may be excellent), they won't really tell me much about the system.The long and short of all this is: it looks like most people do not have a huge opinion, and when they do, it is based on half a dozen youtube videos.
What I do know is this: it has no historical basis. Neither does Haidong Gumdo. Chris said it is as recent as the sixties. I think he's being generous. I wouldn't date it any earlier than about 1980. The founders were apparently influenced by Shim Gumdo, another art of questionable value with a claim of the founder becoming an unbeatable swordsman with no prior training after going to a mountain to meditate, and that art was around in the sixties.
An art doesn't need to be ancient to have merit, but I consider it a red flag when histories are fabricated with the intent of either hiding the art's origins or to give it the illusion of credibility. I would have more respect for it if the founder was honest and said that it is a modern sword art with no pretensions to historicity. Then it really would be viewed entirely on its own merit.
Having said all that, I withhold my opinion of the art pending actually knowing what it is about. I'd be interested to see the hyeong, both solo and partnered and to know what the context of the art is.
Western fencing, for example, is done in the context of a duel. However removed the modern sport is from actual dueling, it is rooted in French school dueling of the late nineteenth century. That makes means that you're not looking at a military art, but civilian dueling, which differs from military swordsmanship.
In short, I'm more interested in what is contained in the system than in the quality of the practitioners, though the criticisms I see leveled in that area are not without merit.