World Song Moo Kwan Association

[dancingalone]

http://www.songmookwan.com/

This sort of dovetails my thread about the Chung Do Kwan. Are there any benefits to joining these kwan specific organizations or is it just a historical appreciation society giving support to the family of Byung Jik Ro (not that this is necessarily a bad thing)?

Why physical benefits are there in terms of training opportunities? Are all the old Kwan era practices lost unless you practice a system that specifically preserves the old Kwan curriculum like GM Kim Soo's style?

 

[terryl965]

I guess what I find funny is alot of the old Kwan all say the same thing, that they are the oldest of TKD but what they fail to say is TKD was not around in 1909 but was formed in the fifties, it would be better to say concept that help form TKD. But that is a different thread all together.

 

[dancingalone]

It's not so much the historical timing I am interested in. It's the physical training that the tae kwon do pioneers engaged in.

I'm very much frustrated that in TKD at least, there's been little preservation of the old curriculum with only two notable examples of the contrary that I know of. Meanwhile in karate, if I were interested in what Choki Motobu or Chotoku Kyan trained in, I could find information about it and even train in it, given sufficient research and travel. It's almost as if the Koreans purposely expunged all the old Japanese-influenced training from the records, and it wouldn't surprise me if that indeed was what happened.

I think it would be neat to train in a real Song Moo Kwan or Jidokwan etc school, instead of practicing the more generic KKW material.

 

[terryl965]

It's not so much the historical timing I am interested in. It's the physical training that the tae kwon do pioneers engaged in.

I'm very much frustrated that in TKD at least, there's been little preservation of the old curriculum with only two notable examples of the contrary that I know of. Meanwhile in karate, if I were interested in what Choki Motobu or Chotoku Kyan trained in, I could find information about it and even train in it, given sufficient research and travel. It's almost as if the Koreans purposely expunged all the old Japanese-influenced training from the records, and it wouldn't surprise me if that indeed was what happened.

I think it would be neat to train in a real Song Moo Kwan or Jidokwan etc school, instead of practicing the more generic KKW material.

I can only echo what you have said and yes it does seem the Koreans are not about to give Karate any credit what so ever.

 

[lastrhino]

I recently joined a Song Moo Kwan school that I would describe as a satellite of the World Martial Arts Center where Grandmaster Hee Sang Ro, Byung Kick Ro's son, teaches out of.

My initial reaction was the same, this is one of many schools claiming to be the origin of modern TKD. I'm choosing to not let that (or other things like the oath conflicting with my faith) bother me. This is my first experience with martial arts at my ripe age of 31. I joined to improve my flexibility, fitness, and engage with my two sons. I didn't choose the school I'm at because it is a Song Moo Kwan school, but because of the instructor, location, schedule and price.

The history in the handbook was basically right off that web site you linked. In doing my own poking around, I found an extremely interesting lineage chart of Song Moo Kwon instruction at the bottom of this site.
http://www.white-tiger-martialarts.com/taekwondo/tkd-smk-history.htm (White Tiger is not my school)

There are a set of forms (Chung Bong) that seem to be specific to this lineage . I'm learning the first one as a yellow belt, as well as Tae Geuk 1 and 6 or 8 self defense one steps. http://www.karatenorth.com/?page=history (Karate North is not my school)

If you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to pass them along to my master.