See, TKD has been watered down alot. Even in it's motherland, Korea. Shotokan Karate was the new MA of Korea when the Japanese came in because they didn't want the superior techniques of Korean MA to outmatch the Japanese. And the art wasn't destroyed 100%. Its pretty hard to do that with anything. Its just it was WAY harder to practice things the way of old with the eye of another foreign government on you. Japan was more strict than Korea anyways, though not as strong for some wierd reasons. Korea fought off China and Japan for centuries and centuries, which is pretty amazing, considering the country is sitting in the hot spot it sits in. Peninsula, bad place to be for a sea attack. And so many other things. Its just amazing how they had such control of their land and their techniques were amazingly powerful, fast, and efficient.
I'm sure there are still alot of the schools over there that have the traditional art and the original form and power, but the major portion, including the US, though we aren't nearly as rough or strict, has been water down due to the government. It's become more of a sport than anything due to the fact that Shotokan Karate is also a partial sport. Korea's MA were very strong, believe it or not. The only problem was the smallness of the country.
If you look at it, karate and TKD are very similar, aside from karate having hard hits, heavier, more painful conditioning, and the extra strength training. TKD also has it's own style to distinguish, it's just the fact that the power taught before the japanese invasion was much greater than now, even though there is less need for the MA when you have all the new technological weapons. That's some of it.
You don't see the Kung Fu genre getting too much weaker. Heck, some of the kung fu schools over in China won't allow non-chinese to even take part in the more pure and sound techniques that make the art what it is. It stinks and its discrimination, but for good reason, I guess. Its what makes the tradition of the country of China. But the reason is that China has always had and always will have its surviving arts, even though the government has its restrictions. I mean, with that many people over in a country that big, seriously, do you think they can control the practice of what martial art is taught in every single school out there? Secret schools teach the secret techniques and those techniques we americans may never know.
Japan brought in their own traditions and culture into Korea during the invasion and once they had established those age old traditions, it was in with the old and out with the new(ok, it was more like out with your old and in with our old...LOL). Thus, it was very hard to practice the original art without being caught. Korea isn't the largest asian country by far and Japan is even larger, though not as big as China. This being the case, even for the amount of people per square mile in Korea, there is still quite a bit less area to have too rule over. And now that there is North and South Korea, there is less space to rule for each of the two governments. So, naturally, things were and still are alot harder to keep secret.
:asian:
