Actually, I was taught low kicks many years ago that are very similar to the low kicks Taekkyon does (sweeping kicks to the calves and ankles as opposed to power kicks such as karate does).
I also tend to believe that Taekkyon would be much less open to change (i.e. trading with Taekwondo and learning it's kicks).
Why? As Rob McLain pointed out, current Taekkyon was reconstructed; the one person we
know of who had any students at the critical time, Song Duk-ki, had only a few, we know who those are, none of them were first generation Kwan era instructors, and most of the people doing Taekkyon are doing a version that came into being between the '80s and the present day. How could it have
failed to change?
The kicks I see Taekkyon students doing match the published accounts I've read (Robert Young, Dakin Burdick etc.),
Yes, such similarities as described in Young, for example?
Tae kyon fighters move with a rhythm which beginning students sometimes learn while traditional Korean drums and bamboo flutes keep time.... similar movements have been found in the tal chuan, the centuries-old Korean mask dance (Lee Y. B., 1988, interview).... Tae kyon's kicks have proved so effective that the style does not even include among its hand strikes a traditional jab or reverse punch... however, the kicks themselves bear little resemblance to the typical spinning and jumping maneuvers glorified in tournaments and film. Instead, taekyon leg techniques are simple and direct, focusing upon linear moves but including limited usage of circular and spinning kicks. Lee Yong-bok says, 'Taekyon has traditionally emphasized stepping and stomping techniques directed at the opponent's legs and feet. (1992, interview).
(p. 66) Are we talking about the same Robert Young here??
And so far as Burdick is concerned, let's take a look at just what he
does say:
The only uniquely Korean martial arts before the twentieth century were ssirum and t'aeggyon, and neither of these had a great impact on the early development of t'aekwondo. Ssirum was a form of wrestling that became popular as a sport by the thirteenth century. It is still practiced in Korea, but had no obvious effect on the development of t'aekwondo. T'aeggyon appeared in the early 1800s, about the same time that the Chinese martial arts became less popular, and in its modern form is an art emphasizing circular kicking, leg sweeps, and leg trapping followed by a throw. There does seem to be some link between modern t'aeggyon and t'aekwondo, since both arts emphasize circular kicking (roundhouse kick, spinning kicks [explicitly denied as part of traditional taekkyon, as per the statement from LYB cited earlier—exile]) rather than linear ones (side kick, front kick), but any influence that t'aeggyon may have had upon t'aekwondo's development was not evident in the techniques of the latter until the 1960s.
(my emphases). And of course, the whole point is that at that time, the 1960s, there was so little taekyon being practiced that Song Duk-ki couldn't find anyone to help him with his famous taekkyon demo (as he himself writes in his own book on taekkyon, published in 1983)! Burdick is noting what we all agree on: reconstructed taekkyon has some kicks that are very similar to some TKD kicks. But that's not what you're claiming, YM. You're asserting, against the testimony of the actual Taekkyon people themselves, that the kicks came to TKD
via taekkyon, in the Kwan era and shortly afterwards. And that's where you have no evidence to present.
which leads me to believe Taekkyon did/does more than simply low kicks. Anyway, how could it pick up those kicks from TKD if TKD didn't do them?
Um... I think you've lost track of what it is that Taekkyon has picked up from TKD, YM. No one is saying that Taekkyon picked up its low sweeps, leg-checking blocking kicks and stomps from TKD. Reread the previous quote from Young, including what Lee Yong-bok, Song Duk-ki's senior student, one of his very few and Chair of the Taekkyon Research Association, says about real taekkyon, traditional taekyon. I've highlighted them in red, just so there won't be any mistake. The point is that during the course of its reconstruction the '80s, nouveau Taekkyon picked up its complex spinning kicks from TKD, by which time those kicks were well established in competition TKD circles.
The low pushing and stomping maneuvers that were its trademark are the things it always had.
I've also read several accounts of Won Kuk Lee being a Taekkyon student as a teenager. The official accounts say that he left for Japan at age 19 to attend school. They never say what he did BEFORE he left for Japan. I've also read at least one account in TaekwondoTimes (I forget who it was) that stated GGM Lee did teach some Taekkyon as part of his curriculum. Lee stated he learned from a "Mr. Kim". This would have been around 1920 in Seoul.
You can appeal all you like to evidence that you can't produce, YM, but this is all a version of the 'monks practicing in secret in the mountains who left no records', the kind of story which is in principle impossible to test. It's like saying that the pyramids were actually built by invisible aliens who left no traces of themselves and had the mental power to alter people's memories. Go ahead, prove it's not true. Provide some documentation. If you can't, there is absolutely no way to check the validity of the scenario(s) you're suggesting—and the burden of proof is on
you, in this case. As it stands, neither third-hand sources that you can't pin down or produce, or your
impressions of what reassembled Taekkyon kicks look like, constitute anything like evidence that would hold up in court, or even get you a court date in the first place.
. What other style goes so far out of its way to identify its nationality or ethnicity? Or what other style makes such a concentrated effort to deny its actual roots because they happen to be connected to another group of people? It seems that the actual art of Taekwondo gets lost in all of this and the focus shifts to nationalism and ethnocentrism. What is wrong with just admitting the art's actual roots and practicing it for the love the art? Why get so heavily invested in another nation's struggle that you are not a part of, and why aid in nationalist and ethnocentrist agendas? I for one am secure in my TKD and don't need to deny the facts or try to change what I practice just because it was influenced by the "wrong" nation and/or ethnicity.
. Good times, my friend, good times.
