The top-down culture of KMAs: an idea [I]why[/I]...

[exile]

I have been fretting for a long time about why it is that the culture of the Korean fighting arts is so different from that of China, Okinawa and Korea (and, so far as I know, the MAs of Oceania, but I know very little about those, so won't presume to say) with respect to the issue of top-down organizational uniformity—unity, as its defenders like to say, enforced technical conformism, as its detractors might put it (and often do, at least in conversation :wink1 It's a topic that's been kicked around in various threads on MT, and I've my share of the kicking, but I haven't been completely happy with my attempts to explain the glaring discrepancy between the kind of Wild West diversity of MA styles in China and to a lesser but still respectable extent in Okinawa and Japan, on the one hand, and what seems to me the penchant in Korea for large MA organizations, tightly tied to the government, which attempt to dictate a uniform technical profile and which routinely, struggle for supremacy, i.e., the authority to impose that profile on MA schools. The emergence of the major KMAs in the post-liberation era, in a divided nation in which top-down military decision making was the order of the day on both sizes of the Korean DMZ, is surely an important factor; but recently, looking at both the thread here and here, another thought occurred to me. I want to try this out on people and see if you find it plausible...

Looking at the interview that Iceman posted a link to, there are some very interesting specific points relevant to TKD's history (Gm. Won Kuk Lee believes `that there is an overemphasis on kicking techniques at most schools', that there is virtually no documentary history for modern KMAs before the turn of the 20th c. (`There is no record of exactly who did what and when over the 2,000 year process. Literature on the specifics of development of Tae Kwondo is rare until modem times.'), and specifically that Tae Kyon, whatever it may have been, was essentially extinct three or four generations before Gm. Lee and his compatriots began to learn martial arts). The Gm.'s observation tie in, overall, very nicely with the massive documentary evidence supplied by Dakin Burdick (`People and events of Taekwando's Formative Years', Journal of Asian Martial Arts 6:1 (1997); see also the later, slightly different version at http://www.budosportcapelle.nl/gesch.html), Stanley Henning (Henning, S. `Traditional Korean martial arts' Journal of Asian Martial Arts 9:1 (2000)), Manuel Adrogué (`Ancient military manuals and their relation to modern Korean martial arts', Journal of Asian Martial Arts 12:4 (2003)) and Steve Capener (`Problems in the identity and philosophy of Taegwondo and their historical causes', http://www.bigskytaekwondo.com/Resources/Capener.htm) for the very recent emergence of the Korean MAs on the almost exclusive base of Japanese karate (though there may be some influence from Chinese chuan fa as well), with hints here and there through what little documentation exists for the very strongly Chinese influence over Korean MAs at earlier phases, going back to the Three Kingdoms perior; a nicely balanced picture is given in the Wikipedia article on KMAs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_martial_arts. But what most struck me about the interview with Gm. Lee—founder of the Chung Do Kwan arguably the oldest (viable) of the original Kwans and almost certainly the most influential and dominant during the Kwan era—was his constant insistence on the need for unity, and his criticism of others—including, from his tone, his own students—for what he calls the `fragmentation' of TKD:

I believe that fragmentation of Tae Kwon Do into many kwans is ultimately harmful. I would prefer unification of kwans and techniques. Improvement of technical quality requires strict practice. Without special training, there can never be improvement of the quality of martial arts. I therefore recommend strong education. I hope to see a strong educational organization dedicated to this sort of improvement of techniques. It is my earnest hope that a Tae Kwon Do college will be established one day. Such a college would promote deep training and technical development.​

The military, especially as represented by Gen. Choi, may have played a important role in imposing the kind of enforced unification that Gm. Lee seems to believe to be such a good thing, but there is no question that, with a few very notable exceptions such as Hwang Kee, the culture of Korean MA from the end of the war on has been entirely compatible with this regimentation. I've never been able to figure out exactly why that should be the case, though I've suspected for a long time that it had somethingn to do with the very recent origins of the modern KMAs....

But in thinking about the Okinawan karate thread (again, http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52402]), it suddenly occurred to me that of all the Asian MAs, those of Korea are unique in the sense that they did not originate, and propagate, within families over a long period of time. The incredibly fine-grained complexity of the CMAs is due to their origins in particular family lineages, and the Okinawan thread echoes this family-based granularity, though obviously on a much smaller scale. In Japan, there are MAs (such as traditional, `castle-era' ninjutsu) which appear to have been propagated as specific family traditions, and while it's true that the budo arts are not so obviously rooted in particular family lines, the deep lineage of individual schools of swordsmanship provides a comparable `locality' for the transmission of techniques and martial secrets over generations. But, if the model of Korean MA history laid out in the detailed historical studies I've cited above (among others) is correct, the modern KMAs were not transmitted in this fashion. They were, instead, grafted into Korean culture in a remarkably short time: the Japanese occupation suppressed whatever indigenous arts were extant at the time—about which we have essentially no reliable information—substituting instruction in jiujitsu and kendo, as Burdick documents; subsequents instruction in even these arts was suppressed in Korea, and the only source of MA instruction open to Koreans was in Japan. The Kwan founders, returning from Japan with their new dan ranks and technical knowledge, were unable to promote a robust instructional program in the karate they had learned until the end of the war—at which time the military, particularly driven by Gen. Choi's personal vision of an official army style for battlefield use, and an increasing nationalistic need to purge the KMAs of their Japanese legacy, in effect took control over the organization and development of the MAs in Korea.

The crucial cultural attitude that made this possible, I've been thinking, is the lack of an identification, in Koreans' thinking, between MAs on the one hand and family traditions on the other. The modern KMAs were introduced virtually out of nowhere; they were not rooted in an extant historical tradition of generation-to-generation transmission, with special technical secrets and training methods jealously protected within (at least extended) familiers. There was therefore no inherent sense of personal ownership, so to speak, which would have made KMAists resist the military's demand for a `product' that could be widely taught, quickly and effectively, to their active troops. From day one, then, the KMAs were vulnerable to the sort of imposed monolithic technical content that's such a very visible component of the way the KMA organizations have developed for the past half century.

So that's the bare bones of what I've been thinking... a correlation between the crucial absence of the family transmission model (or a close analogue) in the modern KMAs, on the one hand, and the heavily top-down, forced unification model of the MAs in Korea (as vs. anywhere else in Asia that I know of) on the other. Anyone have any thoughts on this idea?

 

[Makalakumu]

You've got a lot of rambling thoughts in this post, but I think that I can sense your thesis. KMAs do not really have a lineage so to speak. We have taken syncreticism and mixed it with a large amout of nationalism and we have reached a point where we are really separating from the arts that we once were trying to emulate. Is this seperation a good thing? Do KMAs teach a student to actually defend themselves? Both of these questions drive at every KMA teacher's objectives and it should shape our curriculum. Unfortunately, there remains a large disconnect between methods and reality AND there is really no top down effort to correct this.

The end result is that I think that KMAs, unless they are derived into some sort of sporting form, will completely die out. The "traditional" method of KMA is nothing but a farce generated by a generation or two of nationalism and has attempted to rewrite the history/usage of martial techniques.

It cannot succeed because rational people exist.

 

[shesulsa]

The end result is that I think that KMAs, unless they are derived into some sort of sporting form, will completely die out. The "traditional" method of KMA is nothing but a farce generated by a generation or two of nationalism and has attempted to rewrite the history/usage of martial techniques.

It cannot succeed because rational people exist.

Happy thoughts.

Exile, your theory is a notable observation - KMAs are not tied to clans/families as are other Asian arts.

But doesn't one have to wonder how in the world the Koreans successfully defended themselves in times of non-occupation? I ponder those moments in history, absent of any Leer Jet to pop over to Okinawa for a few fast, furious lessons and back just in time to save the peninsula from the Mongols. And with each dynastic overthrow and the subsequent destruction of any historical record (before the adoption of written language, of course) it's still a guess, albeit an educated one.

 

[exile]

You've got a lot of rambling thoughts in this post, but I think that I can sense your thesis. KMAs do not really have a lineage so to speak. We have taken syncreticism and mixed it with a large amout of nationalism and we have reached a point where we are really separating from the arts that we once were trying to emulate. Is this seperation a good thing? Do KMAs teach a student to actually defend themselves? Both of these questions drive at every KMA teacher's objectives and it should shape our curriculum. Unfortunately, there remains a large disconnect between methods and reality AND there is really no top down effort to correct this.

I understand the angle you're coming in on this from, UpN, and I definitely agree with you about the defanging of the SD aspect of the KMAs by, e.g., the KKW approach to the curriculum (supported by the technical `message' that the WTF scoring system presents). But my point was a bit different from that, and more general.

What I'm playing around with is the idea that because the moders KMAs do not, in a certain crucial way, `belong' to people through their family structure, Koreans view them in a fundamentally different way than indigenous practitioners of CMAs or OMAs do. My hypothesis is that they see them instead as in effect coming from `outside', from society as a whole, rather than part of a personal legacy, a literal legacy in the sense of an inheritance through their geneological line, and serving an external purpose rather than the protection of the particular family they happen to belong to. The source of the KMAs is someone outside their family structure, and, because of the way the modern KMA came into being—as imports from Japan—the modern MAs always were seen as external, not really belonging to anyone in particular. With that mental view, it's not surprising that the Korean government and its stand-in MA organization have basically been able to define the KMAs however they liked. But that definition isn't necessarily non-martial at any given point in time. As Simon O'Neil has discussed in detail, the military TKD that Gen. Choi built his version of TKD around, represented in the Ch'ang Hon tuls, was a stripped-down, brutally effective battlefield system of CQ combat specifically designed to kill an enemy as quickly as possible, using a fairly small range of maximally damaging techs readily implemented even in full battle gear—and as the military record of the RoK army and commando units who employed it makes clear, it really worked. That was the version of TKD that Gen. Choi sought to make the standard in Korea during the 50s and 60s, taking advantage of his high rank in the armed forces, especially under the 1961 military coup that brought Gen. Park to power. At that time, the way TKD was organized in Korea was completely top-down—but top-down on behalf of a totally SD-based, highly destructive form of TKD. When Gen. Choi lost power and the RoK government decided to go a different route, in the direction of martial sport and international competition, the favored version of TKD changed radically, along the lines you've described. But in the case of both the military killing-MA and the civilian military sport version of TKD, the decisions were made by an administrative clique and passed down to a seemingly quite receptive MA practitioner base that was apparently quite happy to go along with whatever they were told to do. That, rather than the actual SD content of the art, is what I'm really concerned about in connection with this non-familial aspect of the modern KMAs. TKD could be anything the MA `directorate' of the RoK decided it should be, and no one would feel that their personal ownership of something was being challenged or trampled on, is the point I'm making (or at least trying to play with as a working model of the KMAs).

The end result is that I think that KMAs, unless they are derived into some sort of sporting form, will completely die out. The "traditional" method of KMA is nothing but a farce generated by a generation or two of nationalism and has attempted to rewrite the history/usage of martial techniques.

It cannot succeed because rational people exist.

But if I'm right, UpN, then the pliability of Korean TKD practitioners (and many in the rest of the world, I'll bet) shows that all this undocumented, unsupported talk of 2,000 year old TKD/TSD/HKD (yes, there are claims for that also!) is felt by Koreans to be mostly just that—talk, nothing more. I don't see any kind of personal emotional allegiance to TKD of the kind which would lead people to reject the idea of allowing a big bureaucracy full of (apparently corrupt) apparatchiks determining what forms they are `allowed' to practice, and so on. Maybe people believe they own TKD collectively, but that's still compatible with the State (in effect) telling you what the content of your MA can be, under the guise ensuring instructional and grading standards, etc. In a nutshell: at some level, I don't think the state of TKD in Korea reflects the views of people who believe that they, personally, have maintained and transmitted an ancient MA for 100 generations or so, whatever the WTF hype machine says. In this respect, I think that TKD, and the KMAs generally, differ substantially from, say the O/JMAs and CMAs, where the MAs are accepted as parts of the family inheritance of a certain portion of the population (even if not your own particular family).

This is just an idea I experimenting with...

But doesn't one have to wonder how in the world the Koreans successfully defended themselves in times of non-occupation? I ponder those moments in history, absent of any Leer Jet to pop over to Okinawa for a few fast, furious lessons and back just in time to save the peninsula from the Mongols. And with each dynastic overthrow and the subsequent destruction of any historical record (before the adoption of written language, of course) it's still a guess, albeit an educated one.

Well, my guess—and as you say, it's just a guess, can't be anything else—that the Koreans are extremely good at using the MAs that they borrow from foreign sources, and also happen to be extremely tough, determined people who never give up. I suspect that during the Three Kingdoms era, they used the military technology and organizational ideas that they seem to have obtained largely from China to extremely good effect—the tortured history of Silla, Paekche and Koguryo, and the webs of alliance that they built up, using China as both an ally and a target at different times—shows that the kingdoms were each extraordinarily adaptable and ruthless in their defense of their homeland from both large external enemies and the other two kingdoms. In the same way, Gen. Choi's military TKD was, in effect, a brilliant adaptation of Shotokan karate for the most deadly level of force, and it certainly won the respect of the RoK's enemies in both the Korean and Vietnam war, as Stuart Anslow has documented in his recent book. In a sense, I think that the lack of a family base for the MAs the Koreans use maybe made the task of adapting them for military applications easier—no family rivalries involved, no suspicion of secrets being given away... just straight business. So that would in a sense be the up side of a view of MA that was not rooted in a sense of personal ownership... again, it's just a guess!

 

[Makalakumu]

TKD could be anything the MA `directorate' of the RoK decided it should be, and no one would feel that their personal ownership of something was being challenged or trampled on, is the point I'm making (or at least trying to play with as a working model of the KMAs).

And this, ultimately, is one of the reasons that almost all KMAs are philosophically disjointed. If you look at a progression of how most of the kwans developed, they picked and choosed from all of these different drills and concepts that weren't totally understood and then they melded them into a "martial art" that was immediately marketed in a way that was supposed to be take seriously like Judo or Aikido or Shotokan AND it was even claimed that these syncretic arts had similar or deeper lineages then the koryu arts that gave the material in the first place.

So what is the reason for this top-down culture in KMAs? It's to control this process. It's to shape the art around the national mythos and attempt to tell certain stories enough that they become truth. The top down culture is a symptom of the nationalism that infected a post war Korea. The development of post-war kwans is wholley shaped by the top down movement to conform and adapt to the current global conditions...as various GMs and the South Korean government saw them.

 

[exile]

And this, ultimately, is one of the reasons that almost all KMAs are philosophically disjointed. If you look at a progression of how most of the kwans developed, they picked and choosed from all of these different drills and concepts that weren't totally understood and then they melded them into a "martial art" that was immediately marketed in a way that was supposed to be take seriously like Judo or Aikido or Shotokan AND it was even claimed that these syncretic arts had similar or deeper lineages then the koryu arts that gave the material in the first place.

So what is the reason for this top-down culture in KMAs? It's to control this process. It's to shape the art around the national mythos and attempt to tell certain stories enough that they become truth. The top down culture is a symptom of the nationalism that infected a post war Korea. The development of post-war kwans is wholley shaped by the top down movement to conform and adapt to the current global conditions...as various GMs and the South Korean government saw them.

This is my view too....

 

[Cirdan]

And this, ultimately, is one of the reasons that almost all KMAs are philosophically disjointed. If you look at a progression of how most of the kwans developed, they picked and choosed from all of these different drills and concepts that weren't totally understood and then they melded them into a "martial art" that was immediately marketed in a way that was supposed to be take seriously like Judo or Aikido or Shotokan AND it was even claimed that these syncretic arts had similar or deeper lineages then the koryu arts that gave the material in the first place.

So what is the reason for this top-down culture in KMAs? It's to control this process. It's to shape the art around the national mythos and attempt to tell certain stories enough that they become truth. The top down culture is a symptom of the nationalism that infected a post war Korea. The development of post-war kwans is wholley shaped by the top down movement to conform and adapt to the current global conditions...as various GMs and the South Korean government saw them.

You hit the nail on the head.

The transmission of less than perfectly understood principles melded into the art is all too visible in much of TKD today. Sadly the top-down culture seems to effectively prevent this problem from being dealt with.

(edit) Great thread by the way. In fact I`ve been waiting for `ol Exile to start a thread about just this subject. Great work!

 

[exile]

Y Sadly the top-down culture seems to effectively prevent this problem from being dealt with.

Well, from the point of view of the TKD `Directorate' in Korea, there is no problem to deal with, because they view TKD strictly as a competitive tournament sport. And my sense, from my Korean students and acquantances, is that there isn't the same sense in Korea of MAs being an inherent part of the fabric of their culture that people in China and Japan have. In talking about TKD with them, I've been reminded of the difference between hockey in the US and hockey in Canada: I live in an NHL pro hockey town, yet the level of interest in hockey is less than what people display about the NFL teams in neighboring Ohio cities! In Canada, even people who don't play (and yes, there are a few!) have a sense of ownership of the game; it's `our' game, and will be no matter how well the US, Russians or Swedes do in the Olympics. Hockey has iconic status in Canada it never will have in the US, and beyond that, it resonates in a way that it never will here. I found that same lack of resonance among my Korean friends (and these are not `Americanized' Koreans; they're here for a few years and then they go back to Korea, where there are jobs and families waiting for them): `yes, we win medals at the Olympics, yes, this is something we're known for', but there was no sense that `this is a defining part of our heritage', something that goes back hundreds of years as nation was being formed. TKD, or TSD, or HKD, just don't seem to have those resonances to them.

Just as Canadians get very angry with the NHL management all the time for messing around with the game—remember, the all-time most popular TV show (e.g., highest Neilsen ratings) in the Great White North is a program called `Hockey Night in Canada' that was, while I was living there, a weekly evening ritual for whole families—I think people in China and Japan would strongly resist any attempt to centralize a top-down directorate for CMAs and O/JMAs along the lines that the Korean MAs have been subject to. The WTF/KKW have, in essence, a free hand to do what they like with TKD, and since its self-defense aspect isn't even on their radar screen, it seems to me that the only way TKD is going to reconnect with that aspect is under the auspices of breakaway school and independent dojangs that don't follow the Korean line. I see signs of that happening in the UK, for sure...

What worries me is that, from some posts in the TSD forum earlier this year, I had the impression that the `regulatory' body for TSD was planning to eliminate the Pyung-Ahns and some of the other clearly Japanese-derived forms from the curriculum, just as the TKD Directorate did around thirty years ago. I hope that's a major misunderstanding of the situation on my part...

 

[exile]

I'd like to relate some of the stuff we've been talking about here to the stuff in the website that the thread on TKD-as-smokescreen is talking about. The tone over there is rather critical of the piece—and with a good deal of reason. But there's another side too, and this seems the right context to explore it. I think the discourse in this thread is receptive to UpN's earlier post (which I'll cite directly again), but NB: I gather, UpN, from your comments on another thread—I'm thinking of your `peace in the family' observations to Sukerkin—that you might prefer to keep the following observations—which as I say, I agree with 110%—in the context of the current thread discussion, rather than circulating it outside.


So here's what UpN's analysis of the situation is:

And this[i.e, the top-down control over the KMAs—Exile], ultimately, is one of the reasons that almost all KMAs are philosophically disjointed. If you look at a progression of how most of the kwans developed, they picked and choosed from all of these different drills and concepts that weren't totally understood and then they melded them into a "martial art" that was immediately marketed in a way that was supposed to be take seriously like Judo or Aikido or Shotokan AND it was even claimed that these syncretic arts had similar or deeper lineages then the koryu arts that gave the material in the first place.

Now look at what this guy (Whitney, or whomever; I'm going to call him ?Whitney from here on in) is saying:

Tae Kwon Do is an ancient art from 50BC - FALSE - It was formed by "unifying" the Kwans (mini-styles) that originated from 1945 to 1960 (the Kwan instructors studied Shotokan Karate or Judo in Japan and then formed their kwan) in Korea. Between 1945 to 1960 there were 40 different kwan that had sprung up all over korea. All the kwan were competing with one another and this was preventing the idea of Tae Kwon Do becoming a unified national sport. It was more or less forced on the Kwan heads to unify to form one National sport. Unifying all the kwans and developing Tae kwon Do into a National sport became the agreed objective for the "leaders & pioneers " in this movement. It was not developed from the Ancient lost Martial art called Taek Kyon. Alhough the name Tae Kwon Do is similiar. The leaders used this name purposefully because it resembled the name Taek kyon....

The issue here is that Tae kwon Do leaders continue to purposefully fabricate the history of this sport and also claim it is a Martial art, ignoring the government documents on it's creation as the national sport and based solely on the fabricated history. ​

In othere words, the `Tae kwon Do leaders'—the outfits I'm lumping together with the ROK government as the TKD directorate—have given people a fantasy history to legitimize their `creation', brought about by putting the squeeze on the individual kwans—the original schools practicing the variant Korean interpretations of the karate styles taught to the Kwan founders by first-generation expatriate Okinawans who had brought their own synthetic art to Japan—to give rise to a martial sport that they invented for political/competitive-sport reasons. Let's leave out the martial sport aspect, because that needs more to be said about it; but consider UpN's suggestion that

...The reason for this top-down culture in KMAs...[is] to control this process. It's to shape the art around the national mythos and attempt to tell certain stories enough that they become truth. The top down culture is a symptom of the nationalism that infected a post war Korea. The development of post-war kwans is wholley shaped by the top down movement to conform and adapt to the current global conditions...as various GMs and the South Korean government saw them.

Now that's not really all that radically different from what this guy ?Whitney is saying, is it? The crucial problem with the story this guy is telling, as UpN and the rest of us know full well, but ?W either doesn't or chooses to ignore, is that the first program of the TKD directorate in its early 1950s avatar was to create an extremely effective battlefield-ready version of the Kwan-brand KMA, whatever we choose to call it, with technical input from Tae Hi Nam and the military muscle of Gen. Choi to back it up. It was brilliantly successful, causing even the Viet Cong field command in the mid 1960s to warn their fighters not to engage closely with the RoK infantry under any circumstances where they avoid such engagement specifically because of their unarmed H2H combat skills. The Tiger commando units, with especially intense training in the Kwan-style KMA they'd been trained in were feared by their respective enemies in both the Korean and the Vietnam wars for their ferocity in CQ encounters. So it's clear that a big part of the picture is left out in Whitney's screed, a crucial piece of counterevidence to his claim that the organization/exclusion of various KMAs by the TKD directorate only serves the purpose of promotion of a `martial sport.' It does now, but on the first go-round, it served a much more gritty, combat-worth goal. So when ?Whitney says that `Tae Kwon Do IS NOT a Martial art and NEVER was' (emphasis in original), we know that he's dead wrong about the second half of the claim. And it seems to me that that undermines a good chunk of his argument.

But does it vitiate the whole of it? When UpN says, in an earlier post in this thread, that

...We have taken syncreticism and mixed it with a large amout of nationalism and we have reached a point where we are really separating from the arts that we once were trying to emulate. Is this seperation a good thing? Do KMAs teach a student to actually defend themselves? ...Unfortunately, there remains a large disconnect between methods and reality AND there is really no top down effort to correct this.

The end result is that I think that KMAs, unless they are derived into some sort of sporting form, will completely die out. The "traditional" method of KMA is nothing but a farce generated by a generation or two of nationalism and has attempted to rewrite the history/usage of martial techniques.

(my emphasis) and, in his most recent post, that

And this, ultimately, is one of the reasons that almost all KMAs are philosophically disjointed. If you look at a progression of how most of the kwans developed, they picked and choosed from all of these different drills and concepts that weren't totally understood and then they melded them into a "martial art" that was immediately marketed in a way that was supposed to be take seriously like Judo or Aikido or Shotokan AND it was even claimed that these syncretic arts had similar or deeper lineages then the koryu arts that gave the material in the first place.

then it's pretty clear that, if we agree with UpN on the points raised—and I know that Cirdan and I both do!—then we have to acknowledge that to some extent, ?Whitney is right about the gravely denatured state of TKD as a combat art, and the fact that this has been consistently supported by a central agency linked to the RoK government. And any attempt to deflect this point by arguing that the TKD directorate's fables about the origin of TKD should be tolerated and supported because they reflect the hopes and aspirations of the Korean people seems to me completely hopeless, based as it is on a premise as unlikely as a claim that the IOC, in its wheeling/dealing with sponsors, totalitarian governments, cynical realpolik and relations to professional sports federations, reflects the hopes and aspirations of all humanity. So while ?Whitney may be wrong about the potential for TKD, which once upon a time was nothing other than Korean Karate, to regain its completeness as a martial art under the auspices of the TKD directorate, I can't see that he's wrong about much of what he says, to the extent that overlaps with UpN's totally justified observations.

We all seem to be in agreement that there is little to be done to restore this completeness under current auspices. But there isn't necessarily any reason why individual dojangs actually must be affiliated with the WTF or KKW, if they aren't primarily sport-TKD oriented. We have a whole thread devoted to the issue of legitimacy in the KMAs (the `Who's your Sahbum' thread), and the consensus seems to be, who taught you is the single most important fact about the status you enjoy in the art on a first meeting; whether or not your instructor is WTF-affiliated is gonna be way, way, way down the list! In karate, it seems still more the case that the particular dojo is the issue, and it will probably continue that way indefinitely; see Redmond's take on this question in his short essay `The totalitarian politics of karate'. If the agenda of the TKD directorate is to push sport to the point where TKD as a complete art is ruined, and you can't change the TKD directorate, then what you have to do is change the dojang so that it no longer is under the sway of the TKD directorate, eh?

And that doesn't seem at all out of the question. There are lots of people who teach TKD with no remuneration at all; my own instructor, a fifth-dan KKW certified TKDist, does that, as I do during the `season'. The people who are studying TKD with us don't want to become competitive TKD athletes; they want to learn how to defend themselves in a variety of unpleasant circumstances. A fair number of our instructors on MT offer their instruction free of charge as well. We aren't dependent on a commerical model to survive. If we want to try to recreate a combat-centered, SD-oriented version of TKD as our core curriculum, we can do it.

One final thought: the lack of family-based lineages for TKD, its effective ownership first by the military and then by an international competive sports conglomerate participating in high-rolling enterprises at the Olympic level, means that we—North American and other non-Korean practitioners—own it to the same degree that the Koreans do, if the views of its historical origin that UpN and I (and to some extent ?Whitney) share are correct. If we want, we are entitled to recreate something very much like the first generation Kwan version of the modern KMAs without having to apologize to anyone. If we want that highly effective fighting system, a Koreanized version of Shotokan and other karate variants, with possibly some Chinese sources as well, then we're allowed to do so and call it TKD, because the true combat art that the Kwan founders learned and taught, even in somewhat diluted form, was the foundation of TKD, no?

Back to the future, guys....

 

[Tez3]

I'm going to post this then get off to bed as I'm about to totally horrify absolutely everyone. I do apologise in advance if people are offended and shocked.

In my club we teach TSD, my instructor was taught it and graded at a club near where he was posted to at the time. Being a serviceman meant basically doing whatever style you could as your style may not have a club near. This way he has earned several Dan grades in different styles. His TSD instructor doesn't live too far away from us and I have trained with him too, I had to change from Wado Ryu to TSD for the same reasons. I have no idea who Steve, Mick's instructor trained with as it's never been of interest to anyone. The TSD we do isn't with any organisation just ours, Shotakai Martial Arts. The Hyungs we do are from Grand Master Kang UK with variations put in by Steve.

We have no dealings whatsoever with any Koreans and are quite happy doing everything ourselves. Does this make it not a Korean Martial art any more? Perhaps. However it doesn't matter in the slightest really, our standards are high, the students and instructors enjoy what they train and we have good, strong and competent martial artists.

I have had little to do with TKD, the little I had has been pleasant. Good instructors, solid grades etc. My question is really although I'm probably being very naive and simplistic, is.... ok TKD is perceived as a Korean entity but why do people outside argue, fret and worry about ruling bodies in Korea? Why not set your own up? They are equally valid if you do it properly! I realise that the Olympic connection wants one single organisation to deal with but lets face it how many students are ever going to compete in the Olympics? From all the posts on here I can't help thinking you really, really must get over this lineage hang up. Live in the presant not the past.

I realise I may be preaching heresy here but why not say bugger it, I love TKD and will carry on teaching it in my school and forget about all the politics?No one needs to be ruled from abroad. If you teach something and it works why get mired down in the history debate? Over here I doubt many martial artists could tell you who their teacher's teacher was simply because we don't care! It tells you nothing! The only truth is that you find the right instructor for you. It simply doesn't matter if TKD is a day old, a year old or a thousand, let the policitians argue among themselves, the only question to ask is DOES IT WORK?

Separate yourselves and your clubs from the arguments, set your own associations up and get on with the important part... training. The Koreans may have 'invented' TKD but they don't own it now. Hell the Brits invented soccer and look where that is, same with rubgy,snooker and pool, cricket, tennis. These are all international sports now no one owns them.

I do have respect for the past, I love Wado but again the club I trained with that the only important thing was that we knew the Chief Instructor Patrick Scantlebury was a good instructor. Did he ever train with Otsuka Sensei? No idea. Patick kicked butt, taught those of us who are slower and less able as well as the talented to defend ourselves, fight and do very good basic karate as well as advanced ( I've had compliments on my basics from other instructors in other styles) did I need more?

 

[exile]

I'm going to post this then get off to bed as I'm about to totally horrify absolutely everyone. I do apologise in advance if people are offended and shocked.

OK, lemme get in the proper frame of mind, Tez... :xtrmshock :xtrmshock :xtrmshock :xtrmshock

But really, :lol:

Sorry, I gotta laugh, because the fact is that I don't think anyone (on this thread at least) will be shocked in the least by your take—what you're saying is certainly the burden of my own previous post: we own TKD just as much as anyone else. Read on...

In my club we teach TSD, my instructor was taught it and graded at a club near where he was posted to at the time. Being a serviceman meant basically doing whatever style you could as your style may not have a club near. This way he has earned several Dan grades in different styles. His TSD instructor doesn't live too far away from us and I have trained with him too, I had to change from Wado Ryu to TSD for the same reasons. I have no idea who Steve, Mick's instructor trained with as it's never been of interest to anyone. The TSD we do isn't with any organisation just ours, Shotakai Martial Arts. The Hyungs we do are from Grand Master Kang UK with variations put in by Steve.

We have no dealings whatsoever with any Koreans and are quite happy doing everything ourselves. Does this make it not a Korean Martial art any more? Perhaps. However it doesn't matter in the slightest really, our standards are high, the students and instructors enjoy what they train and we have good, strong and competent martial artists.

And that's really the point, isn't it? (I was going to say `innit', but that's probably too close to chav-speak for comfort :uhohh:...) Martial effectiveness. What makes TKD TKD is the existence of a technical toolkit almost entirely drawn from Shotokan karate, but with an expanded repertoire of kicking techs (the open-hip kicking style is a genuine innovation, and there are several others that I think of as of less importance in Stuart Anslow's book, where he illustrates some contrasts in TKD and Shotokan techs). If you use that toolkit in a way that reflects Korean karate strategic concepts, then you're doing TKD, I'd say. So far, everything you've said has the ring of truth, to me anyway...

I have had little to do with TKD, the little I had has been pleasant. Good instructors, solid grades etc. My question is really although I'm probably being very naive and simplistic, is.... ok TKD is perceived as a Korean entity but why do people outside argue, fret and worry about ruling bodies in Korea? Why not set your own up? They are equally valid if you do it properly!

That was my idea in my previous post: cut the apron strings. I personally suspect the Korean idea of TKD was totally compatible with what I myself want in an MA... in the Kwan era version. I see no reason why TKD can't be the Kwan era version of TKD, rather than the WTF/KKW's sports-tech dominated curriculum. So far, not even a little bit of shock and/or offense... sorry!

I realise that the Olympic connection wants one single organisation to deal with but lets face it how many students are ever going to compete in the Olympics?

That's just what I was saying about my own dojang... I'm still waiting to be horrified, shocked, or offended...

from all the posts on here I can't help thinking you really, really must get over this lineage hang up. Live in the presant not the past.

Well, the lineage issue is really connected to the point you're trying to make. I always revert to my own dojang lineage because that lineage goes back to one of the most Shotokan-influenced of all the kwans—this is something that UpN has independently noted about Song Moo Kwan: it's very karate-like take on the basic technical content. And more generally, your lineage to TKD, if you follow it back, can provide plenty of ammunition to bring to bear to challenge anyone who claims that TKD has no combat content. The importance of lineage in the discussion about the WTF/KKW is, your instructor is much more important than any organization/association/federation membership. Talking about lineage (in the NAmerican context, anyway) is, or can be, code for distancing yourself from the TKD directorate, which has attempted to erase the Kwan distinctions from living memory.

I realise I may be preaching heresy here but why not say bugger it, I love TKD and will carry on teaching it in my school and forget about all the politics?

Actually, Tez, you're preaching to the choir here. I suspect UpN and Cirdan wouldn't give you the least bit of argument; I certainly wouldn't...

No one needs to be ruled from abroad. If you teach something and it works why get mired down in the history debate? Over here I doubt many martial artists could tell you who their teacher's teacher was simply because we don't care! It tells you nothing! The only truth is that you find the right instructor for you. It simply doesn't matter if TKD is a day old, a year old or a thousand, let the policitians argue among themselves, the only question to ask is DOES IT WORK?

Well, this is a very British MA take on things, brought to us by the people who also revived the interest, and the decoding skills, for combat-effective bunkai in the 1990s—Iain Abernethy, Rick Clark, Doug James, and Bill Burgar in karate, and later Simon O'Neil and Stuart Anslow in TKD. What works under `live' conditions, and how traditional karate and TKD gave you a toolkit to enable you to make it work, is what British MA thinking brings to the table, without this incredible sectarian hostility and obsession over doctrinal purity that you often find in the US. Needless to say, I'd like to see more of that pragmatic attitude cross the Pond and take root here...

Separate yourselves and your clubs from the arguments, set your own associations up and get on with the important part... training. The Koreans may have 'invented' TKD but they don't own it now. Hell the Brits invented soccer and look where that is, same with rubgy,snooker and pool, cricket, tennis. These are all international sports now no one owns them.

I do have respect for the past, I love Wado but again the club I trained with that the only important thing was that we knew the Chief Instructor Patrick Scantlebury was a good instructor. Did he ever train with Otsuka Sensei? No idea. Patick kicked butt, taught those of us who are slower and less able as well as the talented to defend ourselves, fight and do very good basic karate as well as advanced ( I've had compliments on my basics from other instructors in other styles) did I need more?

Well, I'm still waiting to be shocked or offended, or even find something to disagree seriously with, but clearly it ain' gonna happen in this post...

 

[Tez3]

Rofl!

Exile, not you,ever, you are broad minded and cosmopolitian but there are some very po faced posts floating around that seem to almost worship anything that comes from Japan/Corea/China etc. (No spelling error there btw the Japanese changed the C to a K) and will bow down to everything (pun intended).

In the UK we are used to inventing things and having everyone else either take over or do it better than us lol!

 

[zDom]

Interesting stuff.

As for me, I think I'm already there (as opposed to being shocked or offended )

In my heart and mind, even though I am "retired," I have already decided that I will NEVER change "my TKD" no matter what the KKW or WTF say. Ever.

I believe the TKD I learned is effective and if I am ever asked to teach someone, that is what they will get despite whatever is going on currently in Korea or Timbuktu.

As I have already "retired" and figure it will be hapkido from now on for me, I really hope, due to my love of the TKD I was taught, that there are enough people who feel the way I do (and apparently the way Tez, Exile and others do) to take ownership of TKD, independent of Korean authorities, and preserve and develop it according to their conscience.

Let the New Era of Kwans begin!

 

[exile]

Rofl!

Exile, not you,ever, you are broad minded and cosmopolitian but there are some very po faced posts floating around that seem to almost worship anything that comes from Japan/Corea/China etc. (No spelling error there btw the Japanese changed the C to a K) and will bow down to everything (pun intended).

Yeah, I understand exactly what you mean.

In the UK we are used to inventing things and having everyone else either take over or do it better than us lol!

Well, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but it's also the most exasperating form! But still, that's a good way to look at it.

I am always a little bit surprised at how much sectarianism in MA matters you find in this part of the world. Especially because the reinvention of oneself is such a big part of American culture. Find something good, work on it to make it still better, and now you're the new gold standard. But there seems to be such a strong preoccupation with `ancestral correctness' in the MAs in these parts, if I can put it like that.

The really funny (not ha-ha funny) thing about all this is that, in line with my hunch that the lack of a genuinely ancestral family-based linkage to the modern KMAs accounts in large part for the success of monopolistic Korean agencies trying (with historically little resistance or difficulty) to impose a monolithic MA culture and curriculum on Koreans (aka trying to boss people around), the Kwan founders faithfully brought home all kinds of institutional behavior that reflects the social milieu of the dojos they trained in. For example, many people who study TKD in a `traditional' dojang—maybe most—know about the `Five Precepts'; these are often written out more or less elaborately, sometimes accompanied by the original Korean calligaraphy for these precepts. But it is fairly obvious that the whole custom derives from the Japanese karate dojo kun usually attributed to Funakoshi himself:

Each seek perfection of character
Each be faithful (protect the way of truth)
Each endeavour (foster the spirit of effort)
Each respect the rules of etiquette
Each refrain from violent behavior (guard against impetuous courage)

Yes, yes, I know we've been told that the Five Precepts reflect the Buddhist code that the Hwarang (about whom we have almost no certain knowledge whatever) received as part of their Buddhist instruction. But take a look at the `five precepts' of Buddhism (with the original Sanskrit supplied) and decide for yourself whether these are the source of the Five Precepts of TKD:

I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life (killing) of living beings. [P?n?tip?t? veramani sikkh?padam sam?diy?mi]

I undertake the precept to refrain from stealing. (lit. "taking what is not offered") [Adinn?d?n? veramani sikkh?padam sam?diy?mi]

I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct (adultery, rape, exploitation, etc). [K?mesu micch?c?ra veramani sikkh?padam sam?diy?mi]

I undertake the precept to refrain from false speech (lying). [Mus?v?da veramani sikkh?padam sam?diy?mi]

I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicants which lead to heedlessness. [Sur? meraya majja pam?datth?n? veramani sikkh?padam sam?diy?mi]

Has that familiar ring.... not?? :lol:

The resemblance between the dojang recitation of the Five (or Eight, or however many) Precepts and Funakoshi's dojo Kun is exactly what you would expect, given that just as you fight what've you trained, you teach what you've learned. The etiquette rituals of the dojo, like the kata, the kihon line drills and the rest, were picked up and transplanted holus-bolus to Korea by young MAists who had learned all these things thoroughly in Tokyo and other Japanese training venues. The fact is that the Koreans were in effect relearning MAs, after nearly half a century or so during which they had been suppressed; and the gambling/challenge game of taekyon popular in the 19th c. in Korea—itself virtually extinct by the end of that century—hardly followed anyting remotely like modern dojang etiquette! There had been no martial tradition for centuries in Korea prior to this introduction of Japanese techniques; and there had been long periods under the Yi dynasty when the emphatic official Confucianism of the state had led to considerable official hostility toward combat arts even prior to the Japanese occupation. In effect, the modern Korean linear striking arts were just `brought over' less than a century ago, enjoyed a very brief period in which they were taught by freewheeling Kwan instructors as one or another variant of the karate those instructors had learned, and then, shortly after liberation, were appropriated by the TKD directorate (apart from TSD)... and then we find all this sectarian argument and faction fighting and doctrinal purity argument that you allude to in your post. I doubt very much that the great majority of current Korean citizens care about such matters, and it seems bizarre that we on this side of the Pacific should do so...

 

[Tez3]

I shall have to try harder to shock lol! To be honest I rather think the people who would have been shocked would have closed their minds already.

The other night while at work I came into our rest room for a break ( yep tea break) switching on the tv, a film caught my eye as I thought it was Japanese ay first glance so I sat down to watch. It was set sometime in the past but despite the subtitles I couldn't place the film, nothng looked quite right. The clothes seemed almost Japanese but not quite, the houses looked Chinese, it seemed a mixture of everything. The characters talked of going to Seoul and China, I watched it all the way through, it was a sad love story. As people who know Korea better than I have guessed it was a Korean film and perhaps my not instantly recognising it as such the way one would a film set in America, France etc is part of the problem? As Exile said I too doubt if Koreans are actually bothered much about TKD but I suspect they do care about their identity or perhaps more correctly as not being misidentified as Japanese/Chinese etc. As always the politicians, always anxious to jump on a band wagon, have hijacked TKD to 'solve an identity problem.' And this has what to do with us? Well nothing really!
I don't believe any people or country has a monoply on certain things, martial arts included. If something benefits mankind and I really believe martial arts does, it belongs to the world.

If you'll forgive me here, America is a young country and perhaps slightly initmidated by older civilisations ( not the UK, we're family -that doesn't count) such as the Japanese so they mistakenly think they have to venerate rather than just respect. I'll wander slightly here, a couple of years ago we had an American fighter over for a show with his wife, afterwards we took them around some of our countryside here where I live, we took them to Bolton Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was held captive by Queen Bess, they were quite staggered by the idea that the building was far far older than thier country, there was a quite sort of hushness about them and when I introduced them to my daughter who casually said that Lord Bolton's son was a mate of hers the hushness went to almost bowing. The couple were lovely independant proud to be American people, he's a Vietnam vet even so why in the presence of something merely old ( the castle not me) did it induce such reverance and what Exile called ancestral correctness? I think it's the same with martial arts.

 

[Makalakumu]

I like the direction this thread is going. The people who practice the art truly own it and we don't have subjugate ourselves in any top down structure if we don't want to. However, there are a few more points that I'd like to make that kind of muddy this issue abit.

1. The top down structure is a political movement. The people who are guiding it are sincerely attempted to recreate a Korean culture that was almost totally destroyed the turn of last century. Despite all of the twists and turns and mistakes, can anyone really say that the end is not a noble goal? As I see it, the mass marketing of sport TKD is an honest attempt to promote something that is Korean...to project Korean identity. This leads into my next point.

2. I think we (myself included) need to be more careful what we classify as a martial art and what is not. Sport TKD may have some SD applications, but that isn't its purpose...but neither is that the purpose in boxing, fencing, kendo, or wrestling to an extent, yet we still call them a martial art. So, why are we being so hard on sport TKD? For myself, I'm irked by the rewriting of various aspects of history, but I try not to let that color the entire picture so that I throw the baby out with the bathwater.

3. Lineage is both a cure and a curse to this situation. For TKD as a whole, we can see that it has shotokan roots, but this will become less apparent as the art moves more to a sporting form (and I believe that this is by design). At some point in the future, sport TKD will LOSE its lineage in that it will shed all of the old trappings of the arts that gave it birth and thus becoming Korean.

On the other hand, what of the people who stick with the old ways? The problems of disjointed lineage still exist and will still be extant in a curriculum that was thrown together in the haste to create a Korean identity. All sorts of peices of various arts will be thrown in and there will be no fundamental guiding theme or deeper understanding of these peices. This is what presents the greatest difficulty to those who choose to pursue the goal of doing "traditional" TKD. And this is why I said that I can truly see most of these "traditional" schools dying out. The product is going to be inferior to a school/organization that has a lineage that tracks back to a well organized and philosophic system where everything is understood in depth and detail down to its esoteric roots.

So, to the people who are deciding to stick with the "traditional" path. Kudos, because you truly have decided to take the hard road. The end game on this path is that we are going to have to rethink everything that we do. Many valued traditions that were passed on in our lineages are going to have to be examined and perhaps discarded if they no longer meet the overarching understandings that should underpin everything in our arts.

This is not going to be an easy process because we want to cling to what was given to us in order to maintain the label traditional. Yet, it is these very "traditions" that plague the credibility of KMAs as a whole. People who are in this position are going to have to rely on their sheer creative potential and on their ability to syncretize now principles in order to fill in the gaps that are inherit in their (our) arts.

 

[exile]

As always the politicians, always anxious to jump on a band wagon, have hijacked TKD to 'solve an identity problem.' And this has what to do with us? Well nothing really! I don't believe any people or country has a monoply on certain things, martial arts included. If something benefits mankind and I really believe martial arts does, it belongs to the world.

I agree, 100%. If we choose to study TKD, we do not thereby undertake to redress, by means of that study, the wrongs done to Koreans by the Japanese. If we choose to study TKD from a SD point of view, and the best interpretation of the TKD technical toolkit comes from recognizing its Okinawan origins and Japanese transmission, and invoking the realistic bunkai that have been supplied for the O/J roots of TKD, there is not the slightest justification for alleging that this somehow hurts Koreans in their effort to shed the collective psychic damage they sustained as the result of half a century of brutal Japanese occupation.

If you'll forgive me here, America is a young country and perhaps slightly initmidated by older civilisations ( not the UK, we're family -that doesn't count) such as the Japanese so they mistakenly think they have to venerate rather than just respect. I'll wander slightly here, a couple of years ago we had an American fighter over for a show with his wife, afterwards we took them around some of our countryside here where I live, we took them to Bolton Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was held captive by Queen Bess, they were quite staggered by the idea that the building was far far older than thier country, there was a quite sort of hushness about them and when I introduced them to my daughter who casually said that Lord Bolton's son was a mate of hers the hushness went to almost bowing. The couple were lovely independant proud to be American people, he's a Vietnam vet even so why in the presence of something merely old ( the castle not me) did it induce such reverance and what Exile called ancestral correctness? I think it's the same with martial arts.

I think both de Tocqueville and Mark Twain made the same observation about how much these rugged, small-r republican Amercian individualists and egalitarians were awed by the slightest tinge of blueness in the blood. I think it's the flip side of the freedom to reinvent yourself constantly, which the historical `rejectionism' of the original colonists, that became especially pronounced in the early 19th c. in the era of Jackson, was tied up with. That kind of freedom is great, like a kid's first year away from home at university... but it also brings with it a heavy burden, a kind of vertigo—who the hell are you/am I really? (I have a great, great joke about this, but it's too long for here; anyone is interested, let me know and I'll PM it to you.) So there's something very impressive about people who really know who they are because they know where they've come from, and can point to several thousand years of history out their back door. The first time I stayed in Paris, on Rue Monge, there was a nearly complete Roman arena that had been excavated about half a block away on the street behind our hotel. You could look at 2000+ year old stones on your way to pick up a few baguettes in the morning. How could anyone from a place where a 200 year old building is really old not be impressed??

3....At some point in the future, sport TKD will LOSE its lineage in that it will shed all of the old trappings of the arts that gave it birth and thus becoming Korean.

Yes. I see that happening sooner rather than later, myself...

On the other hand, what of the people who stick with the old ways? The problems of disjointed lineage still exist and will still be extant in a curriculum that was thrown together in the haste to create a Korean identity. All sorts of peices of various arts will be thrown in and there will be no fundamental guiding theme or deeper understanding of these peices. This is what presents the greatest difficulty to those who choose to pursue the goal of doing "traditional" TKD. And this is why I said that I can truly see most of these "traditional" schools dying out. The product is going to be inferior to a school/organization that has a lineage that tracks back to a well organized and philosophic system where everything is understood in depth and detail down to its esoteric roots.

So, to the people who are deciding to stick with the "traditional" path. Kudos, because you truly have decided to take the hard road. The end game on this path is that we are going to have to rethink everything that we do.

(my emphasis) Agreement on all points. But I don't think the cause is hopeless, not at all. You're dead right, we will have to rethink everything we do, but the groundwork for that rethinking is already being set down. I'm enormously encouraged by the growth of the bunkai-centered conception of the karate-based arts in general and of TKD in particular. A reassessment of the hyungs, a rigorous rethinking of bunkai and a training regime which puts these combat interpretations at the center of the curriculum—parallel to what Bill Burgar describes as a `kata-centered syllabus' and to Iain Abernethy's `new' paradigm of karate as bunkai-jutsu. A radical rethinking of the training program leading to rank promotions, and a much more intense, `live' training ethic. Those I think are going to be at the core of the new `combat' version of TKD that I envisage.

I see, ultimately, a split within TKD with the traditional/combat crowd going its own way entirely, and eventually catching up with you TSDers who don't want to see TSD disappear into the black hole, or at least the accretion disk, of a tournament–sparring specialty. I have heard that in some quarters at least there is pressure in that direction in TSD; if that's true, there will be a lot of people who won't want to go along. I don't know how long it will take, but in the end, the traditional/combat TKD and TSD crowds will carry out their own reunification, undoing the rift of 1965. The reunification will be based on a coherent, theoretically and practically unified conception of combat strategy and tactics, along the lines that on the TKD side have been worked out by Stuart Anslow and Simon O'Neil, and which I gather have always been close to the combat-realistic orientation of TSD. I also see a dissolution of all overarching organizations on this side of the divide; the basic unit of this resynthesis of TKD and TSD will be the individual dojang, and instead of large federations, there will be informal cooperative networks of allied schools sharing their knowledge pools and refining their technical base cooperatively, along the lines of the British Combat Association in the UK, or Brian van Cise's IRT network in the US. Sketchy, I know, but I think it's completely doable, if indeed we want to do it.

This is not going to be an easy process because we want to cling to what was given to us in order to maintain the label traditional. Yet, it is these very "traditions" that plague the credibility of KMAs as a whole. People who are in this position are going to have to rely on their sheer creative potential and on their ability to syncretize now principles in order to fill in the gaps that are inherit in their (our) arts.

Yes—creativity and willingness to experiment with both the technical base and the curriculum are going to be crucial. But it's happened in the UK, and I think it can happen here.

 

[stoneheart]

Charles Goodin Sensei has a recent somewhat related post on his Karate Thoughts blog.

http://karatejutsu.blogspot.com/2007/07/karate-acronyms.html

I have noticed that the local dojangs in groups like ATA or ITA tend to build student identity around the association rather than the instructor. Makes sense I suppose if you're trying to replicate the same learning experience across multiple locations. Mr. Goodin would obviously disagree with how they do things.

 

[exile]

Charles Goodin Sensei has a recent somewhat related post on his Karate Thoughts blog.

http://karatejutsu.blogspot.com/2007/07/karate-acronyms.html

I have noticed that the local dojangs in groups like ATA or ITA tend to build student identity around the association rather than the instructor. Makes sense I suppose if you're trying to replicate the same learning experience across multiple locations. Mr. Goodin would obviously disagree with how they do things.

Stoneheart, thanks very much for the link!

I think, with ATA at least, that—because it was a corporate entity from the start—that top-down perspective you've described is pretty much going to be the default: ATA, as I understand it, was founded at the end of the 1960s as a centralized organization with branch schools—and those schools work to a rigidly standardized curriculum with copyrighted poomsae and fixed uniform and other conventions.

What I'd like to see, I guess, is something the exact opposite: dojangs started by completely independent instructors who have studied and carried out serious practical research on the fighting applications of the core TKD technical content over many years, each of whom has his or her own ideas about how to transmute that content into a viable model based on readily learnable chunks, and who builds a curriculum around that CQ martial content of the art using that effective model. With enough such schools in place, a kind of loose-knit alliance—not an association or federation, just a network—of TKD schools and karate schools based on a similar, form-centered approach to real fighting arts, and perhaps links to technically still more distant approaches, those focusing say on grappling, to increase the range of people's skills in close-quarter fighting to embrace the maximum number of realistic fighting threats.

There are models for this elsewhere in the world, ones I've mentioned already—the British Combat Association in the UK, and in the US, Brian van Cise's Instinctive Response Training setup looks to me the best model of what I have in mind (I'd recommend that everyone visit his website, which you can get to via his signature). So what I've sketch above isn't necessarily a fantasy in principle, though I admit, I don't see it happening soon. But stranger things have happened, eh? :wink1: