Bruce -
Very nice. You obviously are very knowledgable about Hapkido, TKD, and Kumdo! There are some Hwa Rang Do and Kuk Sool Won people who may debate you on #3, however, as both arts claim in their histories to be based on precursor arts to Hapkido. There are some common techniques between all 3 arts, however. Some people evidently have problems with the histories of these arts; either way, their added material does make them different than Hapkido in a few ways, due to other influences, and not necessarily all Chinese ones, as I'll try to explain below.
As far as the influences being "Chinese", that may be true, and even predominately so -- but there were Japanese influences as well -- Joo Bang Lee reportedly started his training in, along with Korean Kempo, the Japanese arts of Judo and Kendo (remember that after the occupation of Korea, many Korean MAists were given the choice of practicing either Japanese "sportive" arts, or risking running afoul of the powers that be) before moving on to Hapkido; in addition, the first weapon taught to many Hwa Rang Do practitioners is actually the nunchaku (Ssang Jyel Bong in Korean, I believe), which while possibly originating in China (?), is most associated with the Okinawans. Kuk Sool Won claims to be a collection of ancient Korean martial traditions - while it is quite possible that many of these were influenced by the Chinese, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of them were indeed indigenous to Korea as well.
Granted, it's quite possible to argue that even the Japanese arts mentioned, as well as most arts, came from China. This would be at least partially true historically, but not completely true practically -- while some forms of Japanese Jujutsu (and hence, Judo), for example, owe a lot of their initial development to Chinese arts like chin na, I think it is quite reasonable to say that the Japanese put their own "stamp" on these arts. Judo itself is pretty different from Jujutsu, from which it was derived, and therefore even more removed from the original Chinese arts that preceded Jujutsu. Also, to me, Hapkido is very "Korean" in its approach, even though it was supposedly at least partially derived from a Japanese one (Aiki-Jujutsu). The same can be said of Tang Soo Do, which owes a good deal of its development to Japanese Shotokan and Chinese Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, but, at least in my mind, is also very "Korean" in its philosophies. If we were going to argue that indirect lineage approach, than I guess we could also ascribe most martial traditions to India as well.
Just some food for thought.
)? Is it an overarching philosophy (I did read about some of the Taoist influence of the GM on the site), or a matter of technique, both, or something else entirely? Are they "typical" in their split of striking/grappling techniques, or do they favor one more than the other as compared to other schools? Do they use the "typical" Hapkido weapons (belt, cane, Dan-Bong, Jang-bong, kumdo sword) or different ones?
