[KS] Taekwondo

[Michael Choi]

Eee gad! Not Taekwondo! To refer to Taekwondo in Korean Studies is taboo and 
in some respects, it should be. Anyway, Lance's posting motivated me to 
discuss Taekwondo, Korea's "cultural export" among academics.

Is Taekwondo really Korean? The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and its 
"headquarters" Kukkiwon (KKW) maintain that Taekwondo is Korea's indigineous 
martial art, a claim that is tenuous, at best. On another posting that I 
receive, namely the Dojang Digest, this question gets revisited. WTF/KKW 
constantly sight Koguryo Tomb Murals, Muye Tobo Tongji, and Guardian Statues 
in Sokkuram Grotto as evidence of Taekwondo. Without getting into the 
details, I believe that this is inconclusive evidence because most do not 
specifically site to uniquely Korean martial arts. Secondly, the practice of 
martial arts took a serious decline when Confucianism was adopted as the 
state ideology by King Sejong. What is accepted as a Korean martial art 
practiced at the time, namely Taek Kyon, was banned by King Sejong as he 
deemed it too violent. I saw a documentary on Taek Kyon the other day and it 
showed a recreation of a traditional match. Yep, it's pretty violent, fans 
get rowdy and start throwing rocks at each other, kinda like bar-room brawl 
contests. If I was king, I would ban it, too.

This does not get to the most serious issue of Taekwondo's Korean origin. 
Actually "Taekwondo" did not exist in the Korean lexicon until the 1950's 
when many of the Karate schools in Seoul decided to "nationalize" their 
gyms. After the departure of Japan in 1945, Koreans who studied Karate in 
Japan started teaching in Korea and opened gyms, calling their styles Kung 
Soo Do, Tang Soo Do, Kwon Bup, etc. which all correspond to the 
Sino-Japanese characters Kara-te-do, Kara-te-do, Kem-po. Although it was 
difficult to unite all the rival gyms, the Park Chung-Hee Administration 
managed to unify the kwans under the name Taekwondo (which sounds a lot like 
Taek Kyon, but consists of different Sino-Korean characters). President Park 
declared "Kukki Taekwondo" commonly translated as "Taekwondo, a national 
sport." I read a Korean Taekwondo magazine from the sixties or seventies, 
and honestly, the techniques are identical to Kara-te. Also, prior to the 
institution of the Taegeuk forms, most gyms practiced the Pyung-Ahn which 
are the Pinan forms of (Shotokan) Karate. Technically, Taekwondo was just 
karate being practiced on the Korean peninsula.

I argue that current WTF/KKW Taekwondo can now be called an indigineous 
sport by its development over the years. Actually, Steve Capener made an 
excellent arguement via his dissertation on Big Sky Taekwondo's site. In a 
nutshell, the advent of sport Taekwondo creates a game that unique to any 
martial art contest (quite different than Karate) and likewise creates 
techniques that were not originally in the martial art. So, it is now a 
Korean style.

Sadly enough, WTF/KKW does not admit it the Japan's part of developing 
Taekwondo and probably never will for public relation purposes. It's sad to 
see myth blurring reality.

Sincerely,
Michael Choi
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