The medieval Korea had a street fighting game called Pyunssaum (ํŽธ์‹ธ์›€) which continued to early 20th C

Steven Lee

Blue Belt
==Old historical records on Taekkyeon-Yetbeob==

The medieval Korea had a street fighting game called Pyeonssaum (ํŽธ์‹ธ์›€), which was sometimes done with weapons, sometimes done with bare hands. This barehand Pyunssaum (including horizontal-fist swing-punch without rotating fist) is taught by Taekkyeon Yetbeop (ํƒ๊ฒฌ ์˜›๋ฒ•). Similarly, Korea also had a street fighting game called Nanjangbaksi (๋‚œ์žฅ๋ฐ•์‹œ) inside a game called Sibak/Baksi (์‹œ๋ฐ•/๋ฐ•์‹œ). Nalparam (๋‚ ํŒŒ๋žŒ) was also a Korean street fighting game that hit with any body part including punch. Pyeonssaum, Sibak (Nanjangbaksi), Nalparam continued in Korea even until the early 20th century; there are continuous historical data made in records. Joseon-musa-yeongwoongjeon (์กฐ์„ ๋ฌด์‚ฌ์˜์›…์ „) also recorded bare hand Pyeonssaum and Taekkyeon 100 years ago.

http://www.culturecontent.com/content/contentView.do?search_div=CP_THE&search_div_id=CP_THE014&cp_code=cp0406&index_id=cp04060043&content_id=cp040600430001

Taekkyeon has always been teaching both regular Taekkyeon & street fighting Taekkyeon-Yetbeob which hits with any body part including powerful punches with historical Korean traits like shoulder (& torso) rotation, Yongryuk (stacking speed & power in motion), (no fist spin) horizontal fist.

Nalparam is a form of Pyunssaum, Sibak (Nanjangbaksi of Bak-si, which is Si-bak) which hits with any body part including punches, kicks, headbutt. Street fighting styles (including punching & kicking) Nalparam & Sibak are taught by Taekkyeon like street fighting style Taekkyeon-Yetbeop is taught by Taekkyeon in South Korea. Taekkyeon's street fighting style Nalparam, Sibak (Nanjangbaksi), Yetbeop are likely created by being inspired by Kung Fu & Muyedobotongji Gwonbeop with little connection to Subak.

An important historical record exists on Korean street fighting game, which is the Prize Fight record in 1895 by Henry Savage Landor in his book "Corea", "the combatants generally fight with their fists, but, like the French, are much given to use their knees and feet as well in the contest."

https://i.imgur.com/i03RApC.png

"๋ถ„๋‹จ๋˜์ง€ ์•Š์•˜๋‹ค๋ฉด ๋‚ ํŒŒ๋žŒ๋„ ์ด์–ด์กŒ์œผ๋ฆฌ๋ผ. ๋‹คํ–‰ํžˆ 1960๋…„ ์ดˆ, ๋ถํ•œ์˜ ๊ณ„์ •ํฌ ๊ต์ˆ˜์— ์˜ํ•ด ๊ฐœ์„ฑ์—์„œ ๋ฐœ๊ตด๋œ ๊ฒƒ์ด ์žˆ๋‹ค. ๋…ผ๋ฌธ์—์„œ ํƒ๊ฒฌ ๊ธฐ๋Šฅ์ž ๋ฐœ๊ตด์ด๋ผ๋Š” ๋ง์„ ํ•˜๋Š”๋ฐ, ๋ถํ•œํ•™๊ณ„์—์„œ๋Š” ๋‚ ํŒŒ๋žŒ๋„ ํƒ๊ฒฌ์œผ๋กœ ๋ณด๊ธฐ์— ๊ทธ๋Ÿฐ ๊ฒƒ์ด๋‹ค." Translation: "If Korea was not split, South Korea would also have Nalparam. Fortunately, in the early 1960's, North Korea's professor Jungheui Gye found Nalparam artist. In his report, he described that Taekkyeon artist was found. This is because North Korean academia considers Nalparam also as a Taekkyeon."

https://mookas.com/news/11664

Nalparam is taught by Taekkyeon. Sibak is Taekkyeon-Yetbeob. North Korea also describes Nalparam to be cross-training Charyuk/Kihapsul/Kiaijutsu which includes Breaking/Tameshiwari. Regardless of how Breaking's system is for China & Japan, Breaking belonged to sidewalk performance art, power circus, power magic to Korean.

In medieval Jaemulbo book, Sibak was recorded to be also Taekyun, which would mean also being included in Taekyun.

https://mookas.com/news/11305

"์‹œ๋ฐ•์€ '์„œ๋กœ ์น˜๋Š” ๊ฒƒ์€ ์”จ๋ฆ„์˜ ์ผ์ข…์ธ๋ฐ ์—ญ(ไบฆ) ํƒ๊ฒฌ'์ด๋ผ๊ณ  ๋˜์–ด ์žˆ๋‹ค." Translation: "Sibak's recorded, 'hitting each other (Sibak) is a type of wrestling, this is also Taekkyeon'." "์‹œ๋ฐ•? ๋‚ฏ์„  ์ด๋ฆ„์ด๋‹ค. ์œ„์˜ ์žฌ๋ฌผ๋ณด์— ์ˆ˜๋ฐ•๊ณผ ํ•จ๊ป˜ ์†Œ๊ฐœ๋˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋Š” ์กฐ์„  ๊ณ ์œ ์˜ ์ฒด์ˆ  ์ด์—ˆ๋‹ค." Translation: "Sibak? It's an unfamiliar name. Above in Jaemulbo, it's a Korean martial art introduced together with Subak." Murayama Jijun recorded Baksi & Nanjangbaksi in 1941, which were quite different from Taekyun.

https://mookas.com/news/11150

"๊ฒฝ๋ถ๊ตฐ์œ„๊ตฐ์˜ ๊ตฐ์‚ฌ(่ปๅฃซ)ํ›ˆ๋ จ์ด์—ˆ๋˜ ๋ฐ•์‹œ(์žฌ๋ฌผ๋ณด์ƒ์˜ โ€˜์‹œ๋ฐ•โ€™์œผ๋กœ ์—ฌ๊ฒจ์ง„๋‹ค. 1941๋…„, ๋ฌด๋ผ์•ผ๋งˆ์ง€์ค€์˜ ๊ธ€์—๋„ ์–ธ๊ธ‰๋˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค. ์ˆ˜๋ฐฑ๋ช…์˜ ์‚ฌ๋žŒ๋“ค์ด ํŒ”์งฑ์„ ๋ผ๊ณ  ์„œ๋กœ ์–ด๊นจ๋กœ ๋ฐ€์–ด ๋ถ™์—ฌ ์ง„(้™ณ)์„ ๋šซ๋Š” ๊ฒƒ์ด๋‹ค. ๋‚˜์ค‘์— ๋™๋„ค ์™ˆํŒจ๋“ค์ด ์‹ ์ž‘๋กœ์— ๋ชจ์—ฌ ๋‚œ์žฅ๋ฐ•์‹œ๋ผ ํ•˜๋Š” ํŒจ์‹ธ์›€์„ ํ–ˆ์—ˆ๋‹ค)๋“ฑ์ด ์žˆ์—ˆ๋‹ค." Translation: Gyungbook military training Baksi, etc existed. Seems Sibak from Jaemulbo. 1941's Murayama Jijun also mentions this. Hundreds of people, arms locked, push each other with shoulders to penetrate formation. Later, town thugs gather on the road to do team street fighting called Nanjangbaksi." (Korean sometimes reverse the word order, like Baksi & Sibak.)

Also, in 1930's reputable Korean newspaper, it describes that Taekkyeon was recorded by Muyedobotongji as Gwonbeop including hand techniques. 1930's newspaper recorded that Taekkyeon has contents to be recorded as Muyedobotongji Gwonbeop. Although there may be discrepancies between the military version Gwonbeop and the civilian version Sibak, the newspaper corroborated that Taekkyeon has such contents within Taekkyeon.

https://i.imgur.com/dKf5yB5.jpg

Like Subak had Subakdaeo club to train, Nalparam also had a club to train. "1935๋…„ 7์›” 22์ผ์ž ๋™์•„์ผ๋ณด๋ฅผ ๋ณด์ž. [ํ‰์–‘]์ง€๋‚œ 17์ผ ํ‰์–‘์„œ์—์„œ๋Š” ๋ถ€๋‚ด ์ฐฝ์ „๋ฆฌ์—์„œ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ถ€์ •์˜ ํ˜„๊ธฐํ•œ, ์ด์˜ค ์™ธ ์‹ญ์ด๋ช…์„ ๊ฒ€๊ฑฐํ•˜์•ผ ์—„์ค‘์ทจ์กฐ์ค‘์ด๋ผ๋Š”๋ฐ ๊ทธ๋“ค์€ ์•ฝ ์ผ์ฃผ์ผ์ „๋ถ€ํ„ฐ ๊ธฐ๋ฆผ๋ฆฌ(์‚ฐ๋ฆผ๋ฆฌ) ์‹ ๊ถ์•ž ๋ถ€๊ทผ์—์„œ ๋ถ€๋ž‘๋ฐฐ ๋ฐฑ์ˆ˜์‹ญ์—ฌ๋ช…์„ ๋ชจ์•„๋…ธ์ฝ” "๋‚ ํŒŒ๋žŒ์ด"(๋ง๋‚˜๋‹ˆ ์ง“์ด๋ž€ ์˜๋ฏธ)๋ฅผ ์—ฐ์Šตํ•˜๋ฉฐ". Translation: "Let's see 1935's July 22nd Dongailbo Newspaper. On the 17th, in Pyungyang's Changjeonli, Gihan Hyun, Oh Yi, etc 12 men were arrested and interrogated. They have gathered over a hundred thugs at Girimli (Sanlimli) Singoong's front, practicing Nalparami."

https://mookas.com/news/11199

https://mookas.com/news/11664

A direct interview with Dukgi Song was recorded in Munyejinheung by Bohyung Lee, published in 1984 by Munyejinheungwon on Volume 11 Number 1 page 67 (์ด๋ณดํ˜•, ๋ฌธ์˜ˆ์ง„ํฅ ์ œ 11๊ถŒ 1ํ˜ธ, ๋ฌธ์˜ˆ์ง„ํฅ์›, 1984.2, p.67, ์ด๋ณดํ˜•์ด ์†ก๋•๊ธฐ ์˜น์—๊ฒŒ ์ทŒ๋กํ•œ ๋‚ด์šฉ). "๋ˆ„์ƒ๋™์—๋Š” '์žฅ์นผ'์ด๋ผ๋Š” ์žฅ์‚ฌ๊ฐ€ ์žˆ์–ด ํ‚ค๋„ ํฌ๊ณ  ํž˜๋„ ์ข‹๊ณ  '๋ณต์žฅ์ง€๋ฅด๊ธฐ', '๊ฐ€์Šด์น˜๊ธฐ'๋“ฑ ํƒ๊ฒฌ์†œ์”จ๊ฐ€ ์ข‹์•˜๋‹ค." Translation: "Nusangdong had a strongman named Jangkal. He was tall & strong; he was good at Taekyun techniques particularly Bokjangjireugi (Front Stomp Kick), Gaseumchigi (Frontal Chest Slap, slapping chest at front), etc." Dukgi Song testified directly about frontal slap in Taekkyeon. "์ด๋ณดํ˜•์ด ์†ก๋•๊ธฐ ์˜น์—๊ฒŒ ์ทŒ๋กํ•œ ๋‚ด์šฉ". Translation: "the content recorded by Bohyung Lee from direct interview with Dukgi Song."

http://www.culturecontent.com/content/contentView.do?search_div=CP_THE&search_div_id=CP_THE014&cp_code=cp0406&index_id=cp04060046&content_id=cp040600460001

https://i.imgur.com/O85h9KH.jpg

The same interview & the same book (by Munyejinheungwon & Bohyung Lee, 1984, Munyejinheung Volume 11 Number 1 page 67) includes Dukgi Song's direct testimony how Taekyun Yetbub broke jaw with 1 slap to the jaw as well as his testimony how Taekkyeon had frontal chest slap.

Sibak (Nanjangbaksi) & Nalparam are street fighting rule martial arts including punching & kicking just like Taekkyeon-Yetbeop. Other than Sibak & Nalparam which are taught by Taekkyeon like South Korea's Taekkyeon-Yetbeop, there's also another traditional Korean martial art in street fighting rule including punching & kicking. There's a Korean martial art called Taegyeok. From the phonetic similarity, it is speculated to be related to Taekkyeon (particularly Taekkyeon-Yetbeop). Taegyeok's original textbook was drawn between 1920's & 1940's, but the currently existing Taegyeok textbook was redrawn in the late 1950's. The age of 1950's Taegyeok textbook was verified by professors and specialists in managing old documents. Taegyeok & its 1950's textbook have been in Northern Jeonla's Gimje, which is a distant away from where Karate (Tode) was taught in 1950's South Korea (also away from 1960's earlier Taekwondo gyms).

http://www.segye.com/view/20081112003370

==Taekkyeon Myths & Facts==

There's a Taekkyeon myth today that it is a kicking game. This is because Taekkyeon hasn't been a popular sport in South Korea while Taekwondo predominantly took Taekkyeon's place as an ethnic sport. Taekwondo originates from Gwonbeop (Mas Oyama wrote in his book "Karate for a million people" that Korean Gwonbeop existed even then, which Byungin Yoon's nickname Gyungnong 18ki, meaning Muyedobotongji Gwonbeop, corroborates) & Karate. However, Taekwondo has been putting in efforts to take a place as an ethnic sport in Korea. As a result, Taekkyeon has been known to the most people in the public through Taekwondo's rendition of Taekkyeon which is from indirect information via bits and pieces of records on Taekkyeon particularly in regards to kicking references.

In reality, there are 2 sets of games in Taekkyeon: regular competition Taekkyeon & Taekkeyon-Yetbeop. Regular Taekkyeon is a throwing wrestling game with kicks allowed. Taekkyeon-Yetbeop is a street fighting rule full contact style similar to Nalparam & Sibak including punching & kicking. Nalparam & Sibak are also taught by Taekkyeon whether that version of Taekkyeon is a set of 2 games like South Korea (regular Taekkyeon & Taekkyeon-Yetbeop) or just 1 game (Nalparam & Nanjangbaksi).

==Subak Myths & Facts==

There are Subak myths today that Subak slaps with palm only or that Subak slaps side (like cheeks, half-frontal by 45 degrees but half-side) only. There are a couple reasons for such myths. 1. Korea has gone through social upheavals during the Japanese occupation of Korea 100 years ago. There have been some disconnections in traditional facts being taught by the scholars from its previous generations. 2. Subak has been extinct for 300 years in Korea. No one learned Subak as a sport or as a history. 3. Subak's name means "clap", which some people claim to suggest palm or side-hitting for the sport. 4. Subak has a cousin-sport named Subyuk which slaps with palms only.

In the real historical records, Subak had punch whether as a real-life application (& also certain game Tagwon application) of palm-Subak or Subak game itself having punches. Even Subyuk had a nickname "fist", which corroborates such records. Also, today's Korean Subak Federation (Daehan-subak-hyeobhoe) is operated by a North Korean descendant. (North Korea's Songdo still had Subak even until recently although Subak was extinct in the rest of Korea.) They still teach Subak even today; they teach frontal slap (slapping front) & punches in Subak even today. As a corroboration, Subak Dance, Taekkyeon, Subyuk also have frontal slaps. Subak Dance is a valuable historical record that recorded Subak moves as a dance including slapping dance partner's chest. Subak Dance has passed down in Manchuria & North Korea. All those sports & activities corroborate the same details about Subak.
 
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