This is a common myth.
Hapkido was created by two brothers who attended a Daito-ryu (aikijujutsu) seminar in Japan. They added the joint locking techniques to the korean/japanese kicking arts and hapkido was born.
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Greetings,
I had very limited exposure to the Ji Do Kwan (Wisdom Way) style of Tae Kwon Do.
Though they had the Japanese kata, it was the fighting that ruled. And the students could fight. The flashy kicks now usually associated with Tae Kwon Do were not there. There were devastating power kicks and punches. It was no joke. And it did not look like Japanese Karate. The flavor was so different.
mickey
I was always told that politics in tsd caused a split. this created tsd and tkd. as you probably know there has always been bad blood between Japan and Korea. (i have a Korean friend who says, "God made the Japanese; then he realized he could do better, so he created Koreans") some guys wanted the art to be less associated with Japan and to look less Japanese - during the split, these guys created tkd. less hand focus, higher kicks, more leg emphasis, giving it a more Korean swag. I guess after that initial split, the tkd group split again, forming wtf and itf.
the founder of that style was a black belt in shotokan and taught it in Japan for years before creating ji do kwan. he trained a lot with a kung fu practitioner - seems odd that it didn't look Japanese at all, being that his style was Japanese, and he taught the Japanese style. perhaps out was changed more and more with each generation it was passed to?