Taekwondo Kwan history part 6: Ro Byung Jik and the Song Mu Kwan

This is part 6 of the Taekwondo Kwan history blog series. So far I have covered Chun Sang Sup, Yun Kwae Byung, Yun Byung In, Hwang Kee, Lee Won Kuk and now Ro Byung Jik. All of the blog posts in this series build directly from my upcoming secret book which does focus on a single Kwan, but none of the ones that we have covered so far. So which one is it? I still will not say, but I am sure many readers can now make a very educated guess as we have eliminated Yun Mu Kwan, Ji Do Kwan, YMCA Kwon Bop Bu (and Chang Mu Kwan/ Kang Duk Won), Mu Duk Kwan, Chung Do Kwan and today Song Mu Kwan. Like the other blog posts this one is rather short since I wanted to introduce the different major Kwan (schools), their founders and their martial roots, but they are not the focus of the book. Material on them are needed however to give historical context. I do hope you enjoy reading this series, and in the next part I will reveal the secret book project, the supersecret Kwan in great detail (since the book is really about one specific Kwan) and let the cat out of the bag. Hopefully the book will be fully formated and ready to be published by the time you read the next blog post in this series. In a way I will have given away much of the two first chapters of the book for free when you have read the next "episode", but I have always felt that knowledge is not something one should hoard or gatekeep and especially when it comes to the martial arts. Anyway, if you are curious to read on about Ro Byung Jik and his Song Mu Kwan here is the chance :-)

Taekwondo Kwan history part 5: Lee Won Kuk and Chung Do Kwan

This is part 5 of a blog post series that is based on the introduction section in a book project which focuses on one Kwan, but it is relevant to know something of all the other major Kwan as well :-) I have therefore been forced to keep it brief for the Kwan that I am not focusing on, so the Kwan I am focusing on can be more indepth. I have been a little coy on what I am working on because it is very very niche and I am having such a fun time making you all guess. Its easier now that we have covered 5 though, it is not Yun Mu Kwan, Ji Do Kwan, Chang Mu Kwan, Mu Duk Kwan or Chung Do Kwan. So which is it? I will still not tell you :-P But I want to share the essiential points on Lee Won Kuk and the Kwan he founded; The Chung Do Kwan. Lee is as all the other Kwan founders a very interesting and special individual, but a few things makes him stand out: He is the first Korean to open up a "Karate Kwan" in Korea (Chung Do Kwan was opened in 1944), he is credited of being the first to add the "Do"-suffix to Tang Su, creating the full term Tang Su Do, and under his leadership the Chung Do Kwan became one of the biggest martial arts schools in korea before the Korean war. He was also among the absolutely first ones to study Karate in Japan, meaning even by Japanese standards he was an early Karate student...  I hope you enjoy reading about him and his school :-)

Taekwondo Kwan history part 4: Hwang Kee and Mu Duk Kwan

This is part four of my blog series on Taekwondo Kwan history based on the introduction section of my super secret book project, which will focus on one Kwan, but knowing about the major Kwan is still important. So far we have covered Chun Sang Sup and Yun Mu Kwan, Yun Kwae Byung and Ji Do Kwan and Yun Byung In and YMCA Kwon Bop Bu. All three individuals never had any ties to Shotokan Karate it seems, and they are all kinda related in that they all worked together at Yun Mu Kwan at various points and quite possibly they trained and studied together in Japan. Hwang Kee which we will focus on today is a very unique individual in that he never studied Karate in Japan. He said he learned Taekyon by observation and copying in his youth, he then learned martial arts in China before going back to Korea and picking up Karate forms from various sources there. One auther called Hwang Kee a grandmaster in reverse, which I kinda liked. He did not seem to have much formal martial arts education when he first founded his Kwan around 1945, but he learned a lot from many different sources over time. It is difficult to keep posts about the Kwan founders short as there is so much I want to include, but then again challenging myself to be brief is a good way to test and see what is essential to keep in. I do hope you get some value from this series :-) If you want to learn more on Hwang Kee and Mu Duk Kwan feel free to click read more and read on ;-)

Taekwondo Kwan history part 3: Yun Byung In and YMCA Kwon Bup Bu

This is part 3 of a blog post series that is based on a secret book project I am working on. In this series I have quoted from my introduction section of the book and I am looking BRIEFLY into the major schools that were founded between 1944-1955, their founders and their roots. This time we are looking into Yun Byung In, whose lineages include Chang Mu Kwan and Kang Duk Won, Pasa Ryu and Chayon Ryu among others. The man who has done perhaps the most to preserve his teachings in modern time is GM Kim Soo in his Chayon Ryu, and it is also thanks to him that we even know what happened to Yun Byung In after the Korean war. The blog post is brief, there is a lot of stuff that could have been said but did not make the cut when you try to be economical with words, something I struggle a lot with and it was a fun challenge to try to boil the story of a Kwan founder down to rougly 1/2 a page. If I publish the stuff I have written on the Kwan that I am focusing on I think you will forgive my brief handling of the other Kwan. For now you can guess which Kwan is the mysterious Kwan I am focusing my super secret book project on. It will be easier to guess the more blog posts I publish I guess :-P Spoiler: It is not Yun Mu Kwan, Ji Do Kwan, or Yun Byung In lineage Kwan ;-) For now, sit down, relax with a good cup of tea and read a brief (but as accurate to my abilities I could get it) summary of Yun Byung In, his roots and his legacy.

Taekwondo Kwan history part 2: Yun Kwae Byung and the Ji Do Kwan

This is the second blog post that is based upon a history part of  the introduction in my mysterious book project. I challenged myself to keep each Kwan history brief because while a little relevant, the focus on the book lies within a single Kwan, so I wanted to give a general overview and then in a seperate section go deep and wide into that particular Kwan´s history. Since we starte part 1 with Chun Sang Sup and his Yun Mu Kwan Kong Su Do Bu, I feel that it is only right to continue with Yun Kwae Byung and his Ji Do Kwan which came from the Yun Mu Kwan. When Chun Sang Sup dissapeared during the Korean war (1950-53) it was Yun Kwae Byung who picked up the pieces and reopened the school under the new name Ji Do Kwan. Like Chun, Yun Kwae Byung is also often overlooked in modern Taekwondo history, which I feel is a shame because he is a very interesting figure to research. I think some of the reason for his absence in modern taekwondo history is due to his work along with Hwang Kee in the Su Bahk Do Association, an association which gave the early Korean Taekwondo Association (KTA) strong competition for several years. The blog post might be brief, but the information within it is hopefully great :-) 

Taekwondo Kwan history part 1; Chun Sang Sup and Yun Mu Kwan

While waiting for an oppertunity to retake photos and take new photos for new material for my upcoming ABCs of Practical Poomsae applications I kinda started with a smaller book project which is also coming along nicely. I will keep the cards tight to my chest for the time being, but I am working a different way on this one, writing it from scratch and trying to format it and polish it as I go rather than the way I did with the ABCs of Practical Poomsae applications which has grown to about 125 pages manuscript but has yet to be formatted. Anyhow, as part of this smaller book project which is veeeeeeeery niche and I doubt it will see much, I decided that for the introduction part I needed to mention and give a brief overview on each of the major Kwan or schools that opened up from 1944-1950s. It was grueling work because I needed to re-evaluate what I know, new sources has been made available and in some cases I really had to change what I believed. This post which focuses on Chun Sang Sup is a very good example of this since I was told and read that he trained in Shotokan Karate under Gichin Funakoshi, that he taught Shotokan Kata, and that Yun Kwae Byung when he reopened it as Ji Do Kwan continued teaching the Shotokan forms despite him not being of Shotokan lineage. Modern Ji Do Kwan schools do in some cases teach Shotokan Kata as their heirloom forms, but the few people I that I reached out to who actually answered admitted that they read the same as I did, and went out and learned Shotokan Kata and taught them as Ji Do Kwan Hyeong. This is what happens when we make assumptions about history, and I am betting that all this info about Chun practising Shotokan comes from one work which has influenced writers all over the place.

The other thing that made this difficult was that I decided to keep each Kwan history brief, and if you know anything about me, making me write or talk about Taekwondo history is to open up the flood gates. I never shut up or stop writing:-P So if this has intrigued you click the read more button to read a short summary of Chun Sang Sup´s history and the founding of the Yun Mu Kwan Kong Su Do Bu. 

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