Earl Weiss
Senior Master
Pretty accurate except for some nominal information.
Weapons in Taekwondo???
- Thread starter Karate_Warrior
- Start date
Earl Weiss
Senior Master
Did he say that was part of a "TKD" curriculum or was it just something he decided to do? Did he do "TKD" or "TSD" as a Chung Do Kwan student of Won Kuk Lee?
isshinryuronin
Senior Master
I was just responding to your comment about mcdojos and nunchaku. There is no argument, just the point that many that do nunchaku are just doing the showy moves and not using it in the way it was intended (as may be seen in mcdojos) in traditional nunchaku kata, which is not so flashy. Even I think it's a little boring compared to other weapon forms. If not for the Bruce Lee movies few would even know about this weapon. No matter what style or art, I like to see things being taught properly and not as "show biz" so as not to cheapen it.
I wasn't trying to challenge or argue anything. Not sure what you read to make you think so. As I said, many schools now teach weapons as an add-on, even though not strictly part of that art/system. This is no problem as very few karate styles originally had weapons included in their curriculum. It's generally a fairly recent thing, historically speaking. And then wondered about weapons as part of CMA which I know little about.
Which ones? All of the current "Korean" arts are transplants, primarily from Japan.
You're all forgetting one simple thing - all of your limbs are weapons, if used to inflict (or at least threaten/imply) harm. So if TKD makes you capable of doing that with your limbs, it does in fact teach weapons.
The TSD that I was taught in Korea has 3 bong hyungs required for Cho Dan, regardless of where it may have been transplanted from.
It's a transplant, and it's arguably not a traditional art in any case.
Everybody has their opinions.
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isshinryuronin
Senior Master
It may be traditional, just not to Korea. But then, didn't most arts wander place to place in MA history? I think an argument can be made either way based on the perspective being taken.
It is traditional to Korea, if not then it would look exactly like its counterpart. All martial arts wandered, but became defined by the culture of the country that adopted it. It seems some believe that Korea had such an inferior culture that it didn’t have martial arts schools prior to the last occupation.
It's less than 100 years old, and an import. It's difficult to call that a traditional Korean art.
It certainly did. None of them exist today. The Japanese did a very thorough job of suppressing them.
If you believe so. Typical western thinking that the Koreans just rolled over and didn’t continue to resist in secret. Just because a system incorporated effective techniques from an enemy country, then gave it a name that denotes the changes, doesn’t make it less than 100 years old.
So, you can provide some evidence to believe any of the original Korean arts survived?
Because nobody else has.
If the systems were the same, then there wouldn’t have been any differences between the kwans and the schools in which they adopted techniques from immediately after their liberation.
I will stand by the statement that the form existed, and note that I cannot say what he said. It was part of the World Tae Kwon Do Association curriculum for higher (above 3rd degree?) black belts at the time; I saw it performed in 1978 and 1981, and I can't say more than that. While I know some higher ranked WTA people here in Los Alamos now, it's only socially, and I don't really care one way or the other about the art in its present form, so I haven't bothered asking any of them.
Earl Weiss
Senior Master
The point being lots of "TKD" (However you define that being the first issue) instructors also trained in other arts incorporated those elements into their syllabus.
Does that suddenly convert that other stuff to "TKD"
If an instructor teaches some religious philosophy at their TKD school does that make that philosophy TKD philosophy?
There was no difference between the (mostly) Japanese schools that the founders trained in and their initial teachings in Korea. Even the name they applied - Tong Soo Do - is nothing other than the Korean pronunciation of the Kanji characters for... Karate.
It's not a good thing, but the reality is that there are no surviving indigenous Korean martial art system.
I happen to disagree. Even visiting the MDK center in Seoul will show drawings, and occasionally photos, from the time period with text showing the differences both physically and philosophically. You can also learn how Taekkyon was preserved by being hidden in folk dances and Subak was hidden as a game. Both are why TSD is practiced differently than its foreign counterparts.
Feel free. But according to my KJN, who was actually THERE, there was no diference.
Piffle. I have a copy of the Muyejebo, which is what those pictures came from. About 0.05% of the book concerns unarmed combat.
The desperate attempts to link current Korean martial arts to historic Korean arts arose from an understandable desire to differentiate themselves from their Japanese oppressors. But even the KKW doesn't try to keep up the pretense.
Current Korean arts are, without exception, derived from Japanese (or to a lesser extent, Chinese) arts.
Again, if you have any actual evidence to suggest otherwise, feel free to present it.
Then we will have to agree to disagree.
