Explain "teh realz" taekwondo to me

[JamesC]

I'm aware that there are two organizations in TKD these days. The ITF and WTF.

What are the differences? Is one considered more traditional? Is one more legit?

There HAS to be SOME TKD out there that isn't considered a McDojo, right?

[sanjuro_ronin]

IN short the difference is politics.
The creator of TKD, Gen, Choi and his organization the ITF, stepped on the toes of the S.Korean government and went to N.Korea and taught TKD there.
He and his org got black balled and voila, the WTF was born.
They changed the forms and uniform and focused on sport competitions was we now know as Olympic TKD.
ITF kept the tradtional forms and run their own competitions that range from non-contact to full contact.
Technique wise:
ITF is a 60-40 blend of feet and hands and WTF is more of a 70-30 or even 80-20.
Lead leg kicks are a stable of ITF, as are punches and open hands.
WTF is more rear legged in their kicking.
Some old school WTF guys are very much ITF because that is what they were prior to "converting" to the WTF and their training looks it.
Conditoning is a key element in ITF and so is joint locks at the higher levels.
Same goes for SOME "old school" WTF.

[JamesC]

So the ITF is more closely related to Japanese karate then?

[Jimbo]

ITF TKD is definitely more karate-like than the current WTF style. General Choi had been a Shotokan black belt; I *think* he achieved only 1st degree(?). But ITF also does some things differently from Japanese karate.

There's a lot of politics involved. During the '60s and '70s, some Tang Soo Do teachers in Korea switched their loyalties to TKD, thus you also have Moo Duk Kwan TKD.

A famous old-school Korean MAist, Hwang Jang Lee, now teaches Tang Soo Do, though for many years he was known as TKD. My own suspicion is that he may not have wanted to change his old-school TKD to suit the Olympic-style WTF; thus changing to TSD, which is also much closer to karate (basically, both ITF TKD and TSD are indeed "Korean karate"). It's not such a jump to go from one to another. I studied TSD for a time, then switched to TKD, and the Korean teacher allowed me to keep my TSD rank and continue from there.

[Kellen Bassette]

Question. Is it basically established as fact that TKD is a direct adaptation of Japanese Karate? If so, did the penchant for high kicking come from some Japanese line, or did this evolve in Korea? Was there any meaningful influences from older Korean arts?

Where does Hapkido come into play? I constantly see this art advertised at TKD schools. Is there a connection to Hapkido in the development of TKD, or is it usually just taught alongside TKD because it is another Korean art? Or is Hapkido really another repackaged Japanese art?

Are their any native Korean MA being taught nowadays? Does North Korea teach TKD to its' military? Is it likely some older arts may have been preserved in the north, due to its' isolation...or has the public completely abandoned MA because eating is more important?

Sorry, just got thinking about all this stuff. Korean MA seem to be pretty vague on history. I suspect no one here knows with any certainty what goes on in the north...but opinion and speculation is welcome.

[JamesC]

I'd also be interested in seeing some videos of some notable masters of Korean arts. From guys that are more about the fighting and less about making money.

[Jimbo]

Question. Is it basically established as fact that TKD is a direct adaptation of Japanese Karate? If so, did the penchant for high kicking come from some Japanese line, or did this evolve in Korea? Was there any meaningful influences from older Korean arts?

Where does Hapkido come into play? I constantly see this art advertised at TKD schools. Is there a connection to Hapkido in the development of TKD, or is it usually just taught alongside TKD because it is another Korean art? Or is Hapkido really another repackaged Japanese art?

Hapkido is the Korean pronunciation of Aikido. The founder, Choi Yong-Sul, claimed he learned Daito-ryu Aiki-Jujitsu from Tokaku Sakeda, who was famously the teacher of Morihei Uyeshiba, founder of Aikido. Choi's claims are controversial among many Daito-ryu practitioners, but the fact is, he learned something, somewhere. Obviously, the strikes and kicking techniques were things he later added to it. As to why it's so often taught with TKD, I'd assume because its emphasis on joint locks/throws, etc. I've seen some schools promote TKD as a sport, while offering Hapkido as an art of self-defense alongside it.

I heard that the high kicking in Japanese karate (Shotokan) originated during the 1930s with Gigo Funakoshi, who started expanding the short movements of his father's art, with lower stances, higher kicks, etc. but prior to that, I don't think that high kicking was inherent in any traditional JMA. As for the greater variety of kicks in Korean MA, I'm not certain if many were simply developed post-WWII to differentiate from JMA due to wartime animosity.

[mawali]

The Hapkido founder was a houseboy in the Takeda household (I believe) and he obviously picked up enough knowledge to found his own art, which is in line with "stealing knowledge' from the master (it is the modus operandi of all MA systems). Koreans were nort allowed, or seen to be the equal of Japanese at that time!

I did WTF TKD for around 5 years and found it to be on equal level with any TKD of other systems. From the historical perspective, many Koreans were initially practitioners of Japanese karate but as the nationalst movements began to take shape, there was a call to go back to re-create (reengineer) Korean MA.
Shotokan happened to system of choice for many adepts at the time!

[LaRoux]

I'd also be interested in seeing some videos of some notable masters of Korean arts. From guys that are more about the fighting and less about making money.

Here ya go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL6z9SALAJo

[Kevin73]

Question. Is it basically established as fact that TKD is a direct adaptation of Japanese Karate? If so, did the penchant for high kicking come from some Japanese line, or did this evolve in Korea? Was there any meaningful influences from older Korean arts?

Where does Hapkido come into play? I constantly see this art advertised at TKD schools. Is there a connection to Hapkido in the development of TKD, or is it usually just taught alongside TKD because it is another Korean art? Or is Hapkido really another repackaged Japanese art?

Are their any native Korean MA being taught nowadays? Does North Korea teach TKD to its' military? Is it likely some older arts may have been preserved in the north, due to its' isolation...or has the public completely abandoned MA because eating is more important?

Sorry, just got thinking about all this stuff. Korean MA seem to be pretty vague on history. I suspect no one here knows with any certainty what goes on in the north...but opinion and speculation is welcome.

Long story short. Gen. Choi was a 2nd degree (along with many other "founders") in Japanese karate. When he went back over to Korea, they gave a demonstration to the president of Korea (or whatever title he had). The president said that the kicking reminded him of an old korean game using the legs/feet to kick a ball (kind of like hackey sack). The name was similar so Gen. Choi called his art "Tae Kwon Do" and started working on adding more kicks to have a cultural identity.

The Koreans suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese and don't want to admit that their national art came from them, so ever since then there have been created histories of their own martial arts and claiming that TKD is one of those old ones. So both the WTF and ITF have been making changes trying to differentiate themselves from japanese karate. The WTF really focused on making itself a sport and the ITF created and implemented the "sine wave" theory to it's movement.

A good book on the history and politics of TKD is a book called "A Killing Art".

[sanjuro_ronin]

Taekwondo has subsystems -mudukwon, ohdokwon, etc, etc
The aforementioned book, "the killing art" gives a pretty accurate reading of the politics behind TKD creation, development and the creation of WTF and the split.

Taekyon was a type of MA and had some influence BUT the core was shotokan and whatever Choi and his partners saw would work.
CHoi wasn't the fighter behind TKD, it was Nam Ate Hi according to some.
The original masters of TKD were all known for their fighting skills.

Today TKD ( both ITF and WTF) are, typiclaly, shadows of their former selves BUT some schools and masters from BOTH sides still focus on practical combat.

Allow me an anecodte:
I trained under Park Jong Soo and His 1st generation student, Dino Hennings.
Park gets a bad rap because he allowed some of his francises to become McDojos, something that he himself admited was a huge mistake but I have seen Park in Action and I mean IN ACTION.
The guy was scary.
He had this 200lbs sandbag that was as hard as a brick and he would put dents into with his punches, lead leg round kicks with the ball of the foot and ridge hands.
I full contact fighting the man hit like a freaking bull.

[Kellen Bassette]

Thanks for the info Jimbo, Mawali, Kevin, Sanjuro...good stuff.

So have the all the native Korean arts been lost? At least from the general public?

I think TKD has evolved into it's own thing. It certainly has its' own methods and flavors, I would consider it Korean, regardless of its' original roots. It looks sufficiently different from Japanese Karate and has very little resemblance to Okinawan Karate.

Nice video La Roux. I like it much better than the sport Karate sparring clip. It's obvious he is truly applying his TKD in a kickboxing format. I can't help but think if someone posted a TCMA guy doing the same thing, certain people would be screaming "It's kick boxing! Not Kung Fu!"

But I digress....nice clip.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Thanks for the info Jimbo, Mawali, Kevin, Sanjuro...good stuff.

So have the all the native Korean arts been lost? At least from the general public?

I think TKD has evolved into it's own thing. It certainly has its' own methods and flavors, I would consider it Korean, regardless of its' original roots. It looks sufficiently different from Japanese Karate and has very little resemblance to Okinawan Karate.

Nice video La Roux. I like it much better than the sport Karate sparring clip. It's obvious he is truly applying his TKD in a kickboxing format. I can't help but think if someone posted a TCMA guy doing the same thing, certain people would be screaming "It's kick boxing! Not Kung Fu!"

But I digress....nice clip.

They made TKD very unique, regardless of its "origins".
Lead leg kicks, jumping attacks ( TKD had the superman punch decades ago), spinning kicks, these were things that Shotokan did not have, not in the way the TKD did them.
Some of the kicks that are credited to TKD ( in the sense that TKD did them before anyone else was seen doing them):
Spinning hook kicks, lead leg round kicks, lead leg side kicks, lead leg hook kicks, axe kicks, jump spinning hook kicks, etc
Hand wise they loved their punches and knife/ridge hands, they were very into forging the hands and feet and iron body work.

[pazman]

I did taekwondo as a child and a teenager. When I look at taekwondo schools now, they bear only a slight resemblance to what I studied. My lineage of teachers goes back to Shudokan in Japan. The founder of Shudoan studied both karate in Okinawa and gongfu in Taiwan. We learned both the ITF forms and WTF forms for competitions, but the core form training we did was Gaebek, Yushin, Bassai-Dai, and 2 bo forms. The karate influence is obvious in Gaebek and Yushin; Bassai-Dai is a straight up karate form. I have no idea where the bo forms came from.

The amazing array of kicks seem to be either an innovation of the early formulators of Taekwondo or from native Korean arts, though less political Korean teachers I've know have said that before the Japanese invasion, the martial arts of Korea were either Northern Chinese styles of gongfu or traditional wrestling.

Most of the schools I've seen since coming back to the US seem strange to me. ITF schools now have this "sine wave" thing when doing their forms and just seems really awkward to me. WTF schools seem to have integrated lots of modern training methods, which is good, but also seem to have an obsession with kicking those little "pork chop" pads.

Anyways, taekwondo is awesome for kids and for learning a couple of kicks like back heel kick.

[MightyB]

Hwa Rong Do is a recreation of one of the original Korean Martial Arts. It seems to be a blend of Chinese and Japanese arts, which makes sense due to location and history.