Talking bad about Hwarang Do

[SageGhost83]

I emailed them through their website asking if what I heard about having to renounce other styles of martial arts to test for a black belt and yes it's true.

Man, that is horrible! I think that having to renounce your other styles to earn a black belt is just plain shameful. Suddenly I have changed my mind about wanting to train in Hwarangdo :xtrmshock! Didn't Choi try to make people from other kwans renounce their training when they joined his taekwondo or something, too? I smell nationalism, xenophobia, and inferiority complex...and it is coming from Korea's general direction.

 

[shesulsa]

It's extreme filial piety and there are people who didn't want to forsake their prior or extraneous training just to stay with WHRDA. So they left.

 

[exile]

Man, that is horrible! I think that having to renounce your other styles to earn a black belt is just plain shameful. Suddenly I have changed my mind about wanting to train in Hwarangdo :xtrmshock! Didn't Choi try to make people from other kwans renounce their training when they joined his taekwondo or something, too? I smell nationalism, xenophobia, and inferiority complex...and it is coming from Korea's general direction.

Not only that, Omar. If you take a look at this month's Black Belt, there is an interview with Gm. Kim (Pyung) Soo of the Chang Moo Kwan by Rob McLain, one of our own MT members, a student of Gm. Kim's. Gm. Kim reports that when Gen. Choi was top-ranking army officer in the ROK military during the Korean War, he offered students and instructors the following rather bleak choice: abandon your own kwan, sign on the dotted Oh Do Kwan line, and get a safe posting, or stick with your own school and wind up on the front lines. It's all there; you can read about it in the January BB.

'Style-chauvinism' is an old tradition in the MAs; look at the typically fatal kakedemishi duels fought by samurai from rival fencing schools during the time of Musashi Miyamoto. The famous 'shock block' duel between Anko Itosu and Naha-no-Tomoyose, where Itosu went to Naha and wound up (but in some version of the story, for the express purpose of) fighting a match with Tomoyose, who apparently had been dissing Shuri-style karate as a combat art, in the course of which he snapped Tomoyose's arm with a 'shock block', ending the match, is another famous instance (check out this article, ftn. 7, for a brief account; there are others out there as well, all basically in agreement). But there's no question that there was an awful lot of this in Korea. It's very hard to get people to talk about inter-Kwan rivalry and kakemishi style violence, but Gm. Kim has a particularly hair-raising story about that in his BB article. It wasn't all stylistic fanaticism, there were economic competition issues too, but definitely it was a very sectarian, ugly scene.

 

[Omar B]

Yeah, totally shocking. Not to mention a pretty bad business model. Most of us here train in more than 1 style. We cross train for our own reasons, mine is that I like learning the differences in styles, when I train in another style I don't dilute them or combine them but learn them as separate entities. Disallowing cross training in my opinion is just closing your dojang's doors to people who want to come in and learn. If the art's so awesome people will renounce their previous styles by choice, not force, coercion. I pay for a serivce, for a martial arts coach, not someone who tries to take controle of my life outside the dojang.

I gotta say that I never had to sign a paper to become a serf of Mas Oyama or Tadashi Nakamora but I do have great respect for them and would never turn my back on any of what I've learned from them. Not for the single most devastating lessons in bas-assness would let me say "I started karate at 5 and now at 27 I think I'm gonna see what this so and so is trying to sell."

 

[Omar B]

Yesterday my brother in law and I was in the living room talking about this whole thing again and my sister came walking in, heard what we were saying and said "What are they a damn cult?" I explained the whole thing to her and she laughed at how ridiculous it was.

Closeing people out because they don't want to "renounce" their other martial arts is crazy and Filial Piety amounts to ancestor worship and it seems gets spun into way too much loyalty to some dude because of his position of power.

Hey, if I'm paying, I'm the boss here, your my employee, just like a personal trainer, I'm not gonna go sign some cultish contract of loyalty. My respect is not signed away, it's earned, I and all my other instructors have had great relationships through mutual respect. There's no coercion or force or contract involved.

Can you imagine if every teacher required you to forget what you've learned before? 6th grade math would look exactly like first grade math.

I don't believe in sacrifices, because a sacrifice if giving up a greater value for a lesser one, or non. It would do them well to get rid of that contract because reading it just gives me the creeps that someone would willingly sign something as monstrous as that.

 

[tellner]

When someone says "We are the best. We are the greatest. If you compare us to anything else we will throw you out, take away your status and deny you every existed" it means precisely one thing. The person saying it is afraid he will suffer by comparison and wants blind obedience and worship to support his own ego. It doesn't matter when or where it's said. That's what it comes down to. I've seen it in just about every martial art and in fields as diverse as painting, political science, philosophy and cooking. It's the surest way to make something lifeless and irrelevant, and it's always a darned shame.

In the case of TKD a lot of praise is rightly heaped on the founders for taking what they started with and adding the bits and pieces of Korean martial arts that were still around, Chinese boxing and so on and experimenting with them. They created something new and valuable. That's how a martial art progresses. The people who then close off that door to their own students are doing their schools, their martial art and ultimately themselves no service.

 

[Omar B]

Well said man. Most martial artists would want to go in and study, not to adapt, change or add to the art, but to study it as it is. Denying this just closes it off and makes it unpalatable. Maybe it's a fear of comparison, but then comparison's a good thing. It enables us to choose the right service or product to suit our need, we don't all drive gray Hondas.

 

[Kacey]

Well said man. Most martial artists would want to go in and study, not to adapt, change or add to the art, but to study it as it is. Denying this just closes it off and makes it unpalatable. Maybe it's a fear of comparison, but then comparison's a good thing. It enables us to choose the right service or product to suit our need, we don't all drive gray Hondas.

Indeed. I may not agree with whatever variant/school/instructor/whatever variable you choose, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. Variety is the spice of life, and, while, in the short run, the proliferation of places many of us disagree with is incredibly annoying, in the long run, market forces will come to bear, and they will change or go under. In the meantime, throwing tomatoes is a waste of good tomatoes!

To go back to the original question, I know very little about ninjitsu, and even less about sulsa, so I don't find myself qualified to judge programs in either, other than using the general advice posted in several threads in the Beginner's Corner. That being the case, I would love to hear more from those who know about the details that make each of these arts unique.

 

[Omar B]

I did some digging and calling around (it's the journalist in me) and I've found a couple HRD instructors who told me in no uncertain terms that they don't mind my crosstraining, nor do they require the signing of that contract. Not only that, but it's close to my house.

So even his own instructors don't hold to his crazy person rules.

 

[BillE]

From all that I've seen and heard about this school, it seems to behave very much like a cult. In fact, it is a cult. The martial art known as "Hwa Rang Do" may very well be effective and valid, but the school itself with its policies, "Bylaws" and methods of indoctrinating and controlling students while at the same time sucking money out of them is very much like a cult. I'm glad that so many instructors have left it and gone on to teach the art independently, hopefully without the cult-like rules and mindless devotion to cult leader Joo Bang Lee. This is modern day America, not ancient Korea. We have no feudal lords here, and the sooner those in Hwa Rang Do realize this and change accordingly, the better.

 

[BillE]

Hwa Rang do is a cult, plain and simple. And Joo Bang Lee is the cult leader. This organization meets all the criteria for being regarded as a cult.

 

[Steve]

How is it more of a cult than budo taijutsu or BJJ?

 

[Gweilo]

Ha Rang Do was created by Joe Bang Lee, whose family fled modern day north Korea, trained under Yong sul Choi's early form of modern Hapkido, to cut a long story short was a deeply spiritual man, in 1955 attained a master level under Choi, bur continued his spiritual studies under Suahan Dosa, after failing to unite Korean arts at his own expense created his own style Ha Rang Do, in 1972 emigrated to the USA,
In the US, his students found the concept of spiritual training very difficult, and had much less training time due to work and family life back then to comprehend, so he simplified the art to suit his new students.
After a time he decided to take students that wanted to learn the art in its entirety, into a situation where they could embrace the arts four fundemental principles of training, implementing over 4000 techniques, combining internal power, external power, mental power, and weapon power, and in order to achieve this, students needed to be away from modern life and it's pressures.
I do not know if the arts you speak of are actual cults, or if they are under the principles of master Joo Bang Lee, but I thought it necessary to inform you of the man's teaching philosophies, of being completely immersed in the art, and away from modern distractions in order to master it. By the way never trained in the art, but did learn about it of my own free will, as it shares it's history with Hapkido and it's documented founder.

 

[drop bear]

How is it more of a cult than budo taijutsu or BJJ?

Having read through the thread I would say being forced to renounce other arts is a pretty big step.

 

[Tez3]

I hate old threads like this, they remind me of old friends who are no longer on here, ah @exile, you are very missed.

 

[BillE]

I don't know about the other art you mentioned but BJJ does not forbid it's students from learning other martial arts or associating with people who are involved with other martial arts while HWD does. This has the effect of limiting the information that a student may consume or have access to, thus controlling this thinking.This is typical of most cults. Members are discouraged from looking at any information that might lead them to question the value of the teachings imparted by the cult, which is in this case, Hwa Rang Do. Furthermore, Joo Bang Lee claimed to have supernatural powers which is a hallmark of a cult leader. His word is bible and anybody who disagrees or thinks differently is committing heresy. HWD requires members to sign contracts that would require them to pay fines upwards of 50,000 dollars in damages if they should do or say anything that is embarrassing to the HWD art...which really means brand. This is a way of controlling it's members by silencing them via the threat of fines. No BJJ school does this. Nor does any BJJ instructor make claims of supernatural powers stemming from "Ki" energy. Students of HWD are conditioned and indoctrinated to see themselves as part of the "family" which is another hallmark of a cult. (See Charles Manson) This is then used to control students via guilt and shame. I'm surprised this cult hasn't received much media attention...yet. Furthermore, aspiring students are not allowed to sit in on a class and observe or even to take a class or two to see if they like it....because supposedly the techniques are so deadly that only those with "high ethical and moral standards" may be taught it. At least not until the aspiring student signs and hands over a big fat check. Again, no BJJ school does this. I've been to many martial arts schools and I was always allowed to sit in on a class so that I could determine if it was for me. And in almost every case, I found the head instructor to be quite personable and friendly. Joo Bang Lee on the other hand really does believe himself to be above everybody else. He literally acts like a feudal lord in the 21st century. He may very well be a great martial artist, but that doesn't make him any less of a cult leader anymore than Charles Manson being a good musician made him less of a cult leader. I'd stay away from this crazy, cultish school and if anybody wants to learn Hwa Rang Do, there are schools that were founded by students who left, and these do not appear to engage in cult-like behavior.

How is it more of a cult than budo taijutsu or BJJ?

 

[Buka]

Welcome to MartialTalk, BillE.

Interesting choice of threads to debut on.

 

[BillE]

Thank you. I read a few of the other threads but I couldn't resist commenting on this one.

Welcome to MartialTalk, BillE.

Interesting choice of threads to debut on.[/QUOTE

 

[Tez3]

Thank you. I read a few of the other threads but I couldn't resist commenting on this one.

Despite it being 15 years old.

 

[BillE]

Yes, and people are still talking about it.

Despite it being 15 years old.