ellies
Yellow Belt
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2008
- Messages
- 28
- Reaction score
- 3
I have had the fortune of having an uncle who wife's brother; my uncle was a Republic of Korea Marine! Now that may seem like nothing to many of you, but it is very important to me. He trained me in Tae-Kwon-Do during my high school years, which means I'd never achieved ranking. Fine with me though, I had the best thing going, a soldier teaching me an effective fighting system. Yes I know that Tae-Kwon-Do is considered an Olympic sport, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth, but the Korean military doesn't mess around. I joined the US Marine Corps some years later as an infantryman, and I'd meet my fair share of martial artists, it was quite cool to know that even when the Marines taught me the L.I.N.E., I was still able to implement Tae-Kwon-Do in there, and even change a lot of things for my squad. Still that meant nothing to the mass, because I had no "Formal Training" according to them. Over the years I would find a couple of schools willing to train and test me for proper certification and then I was able to put my message out there. I know this is going on, but I need to say something on behalf of every TKDist out there, so bear with me!! I would receive skeptiscism from my own kind, fellow TKDist, "That aint TKD!" and I would show them better than I could tell them. Just because someone was able to get TKD into the Olympic like Judo, Wrestling, and one my favorites, Boxing, does not make it ineffective. We need to stand up more for TKD and show the world that. The Korean Military can't be wrong, and I am now a soldier serving in the US Army as a Combat Medic. I have trained with Korean soldiers, and some of them can't believe the bad talk TKD gets in America. We are better than that and I would like to see TKD get a better shake than what it has been.