I think a good question is, Is the Taekkyon of today the way it was practiced years ago? We know that Lee Yong Bok started to learn Taekkyon in 1984 under Song Duk Ki and Shin Han Sung. Both these men died in 1987 and on top of that Master Song was 94 when he died. So Mr. Lee only learned for three years from a 90 year old man a complete art. Either it is a simple art or other things were added to enhance it.
So what is the origin of TKD
- Thread starter Xue Sheng
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rmclain
Black Belt
Things were added and made up to make the Taekyun of today. Mr. Song admitted in the early 1960's that he didn't remember much. He was rather unknown or valued until around 1983 or 84. Most of the Taekyun Masters in Korea today never met him. Perhaps Shin Han Sung knew more Taekyun that Mr. Song - I don't know anything about him (Shin Han Sung) or his background.
R. McLain
I look at it like this: Taekwondo is rather like a continuoum, with one end being a mirror image of Japanese karate, and the other end being totally Korean.
In the beginning, Taekwondo was very much like karate, although different schools were more or less. For example, Jidokwan and Songmookwan were very much like karate because that's what their founders studied. I think Chungdokwan was not quite so much because Lee's background was a little different. The Chungdokwan videos on Youtube, to me, show techniques and methods of execution different from pure karate, such as jumping side kick breaks and high roundhouse kicks to the head during one step, especially showing longer pivoting kicks.
However, as Taekwondo progressed, the continuoum swung the other way toward a purer Korean style and incorporated more native Korean techniques, including Taekkyon, which is where we are today. This is most notable in the circular, sweeping, and jumping kicks. I don't see those kicks in karate. Somehow, Koreans rediscovered them and reintroduced them to Taekwondo.
In the beginning, Taekwondo was very much like karate, although different schools were more or less. For example, Jidokwan and Songmookwan were very much like karate because that's what their founders studied. I think Chungdokwan was not quite so much because Lee's background was a little different. The Chungdokwan videos on Youtube, to me, show techniques and methods of execution different from pure karate, such as jumping side kick breaks and high roundhouse kicks to the head during one step, especially showing longer pivoting kicks.
However, as Taekwondo progressed, the continuoum swung the other way toward a purer Korean style and incorporated more native Korean techniques, including Taekkyon, which is where we are today. This is most notable in the circular, sweeping, and jumping kicks. I don't see those kicks in karate. Somehow, Koreans rediscovered them and reintroduced them to Taekwondo.
Excellent point Youngman, over the last twenty years TKD has made great stride to get away from th eKarate influence and try to develope there own since of TKD. But we also must embrace the past for the future to grow.
rmclain
Black Belt
Grandmaster Kim mentioned that they only had a few basic kicks when he was training in the early 1950's (front kick, roundhouse kick, side kick & flying side kick, front-running kick, inside cresent kick, etc.).
He said that alot of people started experimenting with new ways to kick. One of his friends at the Changmoo-kwan (I forget his name) got known for doing a "new kick" - the jump spin back kick. Grandmaster Kim says none of his friends at the other kwan were doing it yet and he never saw anyone doing it until this time. Then, many people started imitating it from the school and other schools. Whether, this kick was "new" is unknown to me - more likely new to these students - yet present in other arts around the world.
Grandmaster Han Jae-ji, Hapkido, talks about his days of hanging a sock of dried peas from the ceiling of his house and coming up with the spinning wheel kick, - where you touch the floor with your opposite hand when the kick spins around. He told me that story two times in person. Also, the flying version of this kick. Seems this kick was unique to Hapkido circles for a while.
R. McLain
I think it's also important to bear very much in mind the exposure some of the early TKD pioneers had to Chinese styles, particularly those in the northern part of the country neighboring Korea. Long Fist Changquan, for example, which was known to at least the Korean military for several hundred years (it appears to be the core technique set outlined in the Muye Dobo Tong Ji's single chapter on unarmed combat) has been described as follows:
Something that's important to bear in mind when investigating historical origins is just how far and wide objects and ideas can diffuse. My favorite example is Ireland in the Dark Ages—nominally one of the most isolated periods in European history, when roads were barely maintained, economies were almost purely local, infrastructure was a mess, and feudalism was just beginning to get started. Near-chaos. But analysis of the blue dyes in the reknowned early-9th c. Book of Kells, maybe the greatest illuminated mansuscript of all time, created on the tiny little rock/island of Iona, reveals that these dyes were made from ground lapis lazuli, which was available at that time only from Persia. Thousands and thousands of miles of dangerous passage were somehow successfully negotiated—on a regular basis, apparently—to supply the scriptorium in maybe the westernmost place in Europe with necessary supplies. And there are many similar well-documented cases, showing how much contact even distant human groups maintain with each other, even during the worst of times.
Given this pattern (the Silk Route is another brilliant illustration of the same thing), it's very difficult to completely isolate and localize the source of particular cultural elements—including literature, music, graphic arts, building styles and methods... and fighting techniques. It's a pretty safe bet that stuff in all of these categories circulated widely, and given the long-documented impact of imperial Chinese culture on its neighbors, it's not surprising that so many of them have a good deal in common with the expanding Han empire, even if they inevitably supply their own twist to it...
The Long Fist style is considered to contain a good balance of hand and foot techniques, but in particular it is renowned for its impressive acrobatic kicks. Of contemporary wǔshù events, Long Fist techniques are most popular and memorable with its whirling, running, leaping, and acrobatics. Chanquan moves are difficult to perform, requiring great flexibility and athleticism comparable to gymnasts.
Long Fist’s arsenal of kicks covers everything from a basic front toe-kick to a jumping back-kick, from a low sweep to a tornado-kick. Specifically, typical moves in modern Changquan include: xuanfengjiao (旋风脚; "whirlwind kick"), xuanzi (旋子; "butterfly jump"), cekongfan (侧空翻; "side somersault"), and tengkongfeijiao (腾空飞脚; "flying jump kick").
Long Fist’s arsenal of kicks covers everything from a basic front toe-kick to a jumping back-kick, from a low sweep to a tornado-kick. Specifically, typical moves in modern Changquan include: xuanfengjiao (旋风脚; "whirlwind kick"), xuanzi (旋子; "butterfly jump"), cekongfan (侧空翻; "side somersault"), and tengkongfeijiao (腾空飞脚; "flying jump kick").
Something that's important to bear in mind when investigating historical origins is just how far and wide objects and ideas can diffuse. My favorite example is Ireland in the Dark Ages—nominally one of the most isolated periods in European history, when roads were barely maintained, economies were almost purely local, infrastructure was a mess, and feudalism was just beginning to get started. Near-chaos. But analysis of the blue dyes in the reknowned early-9th c. Book of Kells, maybe the greatest illuminated mansuscript of all time, created on the tiny little rock/island of Iona, reveals that these dyes were made from ground lapis lazuli, which was available at that time only from Persia. Thousands and thousands of miles of dangerous passage were somehow successfully negotiated—on a regular basis, apparently—to supply the scriptorium in maybe the westernmost place in Europe with necessary supplies. And there are many similar well-documented cases, showing how much contact even distant human groups maintain with each other, even during the worst of times.
Given this pattern (the Silk Route is another brilliant illustration of the same thing), it's very difficult to completely isolate and localize the source of particular cultural elements—including literature, music, graphic arts, building styles and methods... and fighting techniques. It's a pretty safe bet that stuff in all of these categories circulated widely, and given the long-documented impact of imperial Chinese culture on its neighbors, it's not surprising that so many of them have a good deal in common with the expanding Han empire, even if they inevitably supply their own twist to it...
GlassJaw
Orange Belt
A matter of national pride. Kinda like when a few years (only much more intense) when the US was upset at France for not jumping on the "Coalition of the Willing" bandwagon and Congress responded by renaming their commissary's French Fries as "Freedom Fries".
In order to legitimize TKD as a distinctly Korean art, promoters have traditionally clung onto a connection, however tenuous, between TKD and an arguably native martial art. The claim is not just for the purposes of promoting TKD to the world, but also in order to get the Koreans themselves, who are often wary of identifiably foreign influences on their culture, to accept it as their own.
Unfortunately, while such a connection may be referenced in early TKD writing, the extent of its contribution (or even the connection's existence) cannot be clearly demonstrated. Nor can it be clearly disproven. Thus, it has become a matter of personal belief.
"My master told me X, so that's the way it really happened."
Internationally, most of us have little personal investment in the issue, being so far removed from it.
Dan
GlassJaw
Orange Belt
From what I've read of Great Grandmaster Lee Won Kuk, he opened his original Blue Wave Gym to teach karate after having been a student of Shotokan directly under Funakoshi O-Sensei.
The sign on his dojang in Seoul was the same as the sign on his teacher's dojo in Tokyo advertising his art as "Chinese boxing". The Chinese calligraphy on the sign would be pronounced "tang soo do" (or "kong soo do") by Koreans and "karate" by Japanese.
I don't believe he ever claimed in those early days that what he was teaching was anything other than his version of Shotokan karate (especially since his gym was recognized by Shotokan's main dojo).
I have read that the name of his gym "Chung Do Kwan", was based on "sung do kwan" (the Korean transliteration of "Shotokan"), but modified because it would have been perhaps presumptuous to use the exact same name that Gichen "Shoto" Funakoshi uses for his own schools.
Dan
Very interesting, GJ. Our own Kwan name, Song Moo Kwan ('Pine Tree Martial [training] Hall/School') is based very closely on Shotokan ('Waving Pines House'); Byung Jik Ro, the Founder, always emphasized his connection to Funakoshi, even in his latter years as a high-ranked technical consultant to the WTF.
Right, and thanks for emphasizing that point, XS.
This is true and alot of people just do not or want to believe this, why I have no ideal but let me ask you this then. If Karate was the main stage for Tae Kwon Do wqhat happen in those later year that seem to have change like the wind. Why change what has always been a tribute to those GM of the past? Why not keep the roots of the Karate based and then just expand on everything else?
I think it comes down to this, Terry: an honest acknowledgement of your life and work requires, first of all, self-confidence and self-assurance, whether we're talking about individuals or whole societies. And those traits have been in pretty short supply for much of recent Korean history, given their bitter experience of colonial occupation going back to the late 19th century. Admitting that you owe major debts to a hated enemy for what is now one of the jewels in your cultural crown—as TKD is in Korea—is not going to be an easy thing in a country which can still remember how the hated racist Japanese military regime force thousands of sisters, wives and daughters into prostitution as 'comfort women' and pressed husbands, sons and fathers into conscript service. That experience will be bitter in the memory of the Koreans for generations to come—and the reluctance of the Japanese to own up to their loathsome war crimes against their neighbors (look at how Nanking has mysteriously disappeared from their recent school textbooks, eh?) doesn't do much to help the case.
Add, as a second big helping of motivation for that denial, the mystique of TKD as an Olympic sport, and the desire to strongly separate it from karate in order to keep that mystique humming. A lot of the youngest generation of managers in the ROK bureaucracy might not feel exactly the same sharp intense anguish about the horrors of the Occupation (as vs. their parents and grandparents, who do), but they are well aware that TKD is a hot brand, even though its star is fading as that of MMA brightens. As long as TKD is an Olympic property, that's the way it's going to be. So there's a cynical nationalist economics which doesn't give a rat's *** about what actually happened, and who learned what from whom, if a feel-good alternative can be circulated and established. In a lot of the cultures in this part of the world, there is a very marked distinction between kinds of truth: official truth, and 'real' truth, and it's considered bad form to insist too much on the latter (which the Japanese call honne, as vs. the former, tatemæ). Karel von Wolferen discusses the distinction in his great book The Enigma of Japanese Power, but it's not just true of the Japanese, but of Korean and Chinese culture as well. It's considered bad form to question the official line too much, because it's understood that the official line has been put out there on 'our' behalf, and you're letting down the side to point out all the holes in it.
So the official line on the connections between KMAs and JMAs has a kind of protected status, because It Makes Us Look Good. It's a major cultural difference between Asian and western cultures, I think. And it all tends to give popular support to the kind of denial you're complaining about.
My feeling is, as long as we take our attitudes toward TKD from the ROK official line, we're going to be entangled in their contradication in this area. Time has come, I believe, to head out on our own.
When General Choi was the Ambassador to Malaysia, he said many didn't even know of Korea and some thought it was part of China. He was very Nationalistic and wanted not only fellow Koreans to take pride of their Nation but also those in other countries. He used TKD as a tool to spread the Korean culture with his Demo teams.
