If you are reading this series on another webpage other than the traditional taekwondo ramblings blog it has been stolen without my permission. This has happened a lot lately.
I started a little blogpost on Taekwondo's birthday (11th April) looking at the evolution of Hwarang Hyung seeing as this was the first Korean Taekwondo form created. I meant to cover movement 1 and possibly movement 4 within the form, but once I got started and realized that the version I am practising (which I dubbed the 1965 version after Choi Hong Hi's 1965 book) was different from the modern ITF rendition of Hwarang Hyung (or Tul which is ITF's preferred term for form/pattern). I have kept saying this but I will say it again; there is no "best version" unless you define in what context you would measure against. They are simply different, and different lineages and Dojang will have different versions of it. ITF has done a great job curating the creators final versions of his forms (although some ITF orgs has tempered with them after his death), my personal interest in Choi's Chang Hon Ryu forms is as they were done in the Oh Do Kwan before he left South Korea, so my personal "best version" would not be the "latest version", and that is OK for me and should be for anyone else :-) Now with that caveat out of the way, let us look at Hwarang Hyung movement 5 through our sources which in this blog post would be Choi Hong Hi's 1959 book (Korean language only), Choi Hong Hi's 1965 book, an instructional video made under the supervision of Choi Hong Hi in 1968 and Choi Hong Hi's 15 volume Encyclopedia (volume X or 10) from the 1980s.
The 1980s (modern) version of movement 5 in Hwarang Hyung
In the modern version movement 6 is what we in Kukki Taekwondo call Dangkyo Teok Chigi or pulling in chin punch. Its an uppercut movement targeting the chin while the other hand is pulled in front of the opposite shoulder. In Kukki Taekwondo Poomsae we see this movement first in Taegeuk Pal (8) Jang and then again in Poomsae Taebaek. The way Kukki Taekwondo (and earlier Taekwondo books) typically apply this as is a textbook example of what old school boxing might call dirty boxing. Below is the 1980s movement explained from the encyclopedia from page 149:
The ITF version seems to be a little more circular than the Kukkiwon version which can be seen below in this video:
Modern ITF version of Hwarang if you are interested:
There is in other words no reason at all to argue that this movement is not an uppercut to the opponents chin. People might be surprised that this was not the case originally.
1965 (1960s) version of Hwarang Hyung Movement 5:
Looking at the 1965 book where the forms are described mostly in text and almost with no illustrations below you can see an "illustration" of the movement:
In this version we clearly see that the movement is not at all an uppercut-style strike. It is described as what we in modern Kukki Taekwondo might call a momtong an makki (middle section inward defense) and in so the trajectory goes more or less on the same horizontal plane. This is much closer to the Karate roots, because this sequence (movement 4-6) in Hwarang is clearly taken straight from Pyungahn/Heian 2 or Pinan 1. In Shotokan Karate they perform this very linear, and one textbook application I have seen they have for this exact move is to trap an opponents arm and break his elbow joint. I think it is a very bad application, but still it is underlying the movement as they do it. We do have the instructional video that Choi was involved in which demonstrates this movement from 1968. Below is the clip, it plays at 0.25 speed to emphasise the movements trajectory.
The "blocking" arm is done a little more circular in the chambering of the movement than what I first imagined when reading the 19665 text, but the ending is still very much linear and a very far cry indeed from an uppercut punch.
Was this always the case? The closest text we have on the original version of Hwarang is Choi Hong Hi's first book on Taekwondo from 1959 (the first book about taekwondo using the name taekwondo and including Korean made forms) so let us take a look at what he says.
The 1959 version (the original?)
I again have to say that my Korean language skills are very basic, I am in no way fluent, so have that in mind when I translate or gleam meaning from this source. I will provide the original text though so you or anyone else can fact check me, and I for one would be very happy to be corrected if I make a mistake here. With that caveat out of the way I will not translate what he says about this movement in Hwarang because I am 100% sure of this one. He is taking us on a quest like he did with the last movement I covered. First he asks us to look at Pyungahn 2 movement 5, he does this on page 172 if you have the original source and still want to check my transating skills. If we follow his directions and go to page 150 to see what he writes he tells us that its the reverse of movement 2. We than have to go to page 149 to see what he writes about movement 2 and reverse it for ourselves.
The text says and I will quote it until we get to the brackets telling us to look at illustration 22.
"Movement 2: Keep the lower body as is, extend left arm, twist the upper body towards the left and use the right hand to do a rising punch toward point A (the left from the starting point) (see illustration 22)
-Choi Hong Hi 1959 page 149
Below is the illustration of this movement (illustration 22) and it is from the next page (150)
I adjusted the photo a little to make it clearer. The illustration matches my translation which is why I quoted him and not just loosely translated it. He includes a special note in his book regarding this illustration that "2) The photo has the righ hand position slightly raised". Its not relevant to our discussion but I wanted to include it since Choi felt this was important. The marked trajectory in the illustration and the description both suggest that it is a sort of uppercut strike or upwards or rising strike while the other hand is pulling in and it matches the modern way of doing this movement. We are not quite done though, as I said earlier I stopped my quoting of page 149 where he tells us to look at photo 22, there is actually more said about this movement in a special point:
"You can also strike sideways to the side with the right fist while feeling as if you are pulling the opponent with your left hand".
Well this changes things... So in going back to the earliest source we have on Hwarang Hyung to determine the starting point of this movement, the original one if I may, we learn that both versions were considered okay and "correct" by Choi Hong Hi to begin with. He then seems to have preferred or stressed the sideways or linear movement which he calls strike in 1959 and block in 1965 but the trajectory is the same. He then changed it again in later, and by 1986 the correct way was the rising punch or uppercut strike. Me personally I am sticking to the 1965 version but that is because I like to stay consistent, and unless my seniors tells me differently that is the version I will practise. ITF has to follow the latest version of their forms as taught by Choi Hong Hi when he passed away. To the rest it seems as if both versions are fine, and both versions were fine from the earliest source we have on this :-) Like I have said repeatedly there is no better or worse version when it comes to these forms, we have to first put it into context and then we can determine the better or worse in that context. For me the 1965 version is great because it represents Oh Do Kwan before Choi Hong Hi left Korea. But that version would be very bad for someone in an ITF organisation trying to do the form with the latest version available.
Its been a jurney :-) I think that we are nearing the end if we are not already there in the evolution of Hwarang since the rest of the form follows quite consistantly. I might cover movement 6 though as the modern ITF versions have us slide into the punch but this was not always the case. It is a minor change though especially when looking at how much the first movement changed from 1959 to modern times, and the twin knife hand block in movement 4 which was changed both in chamber and in the final position, and this movement where the technique has changed between to very different versions back and forth through taekwondo history :-) A sliding movement into a punch seems trivial then.
I never really accepted the basic explanation that is defined by the name of the movement. If you really ever tried to grab someone's lapel and pull it to your other shoulder you will find that you have to do a lower body shot only as his body will block his face. I have found that this technique works best against someone grabbing you. Either your arm hitting from the outside in-which rotates and drops that shoulder-giving you your opening, or, from the inside dropping it onto his elbow (Lung 5 to be technical) causing a similar motion and opening. You can see this in Chulgi and Palgae IV. richard conceicao
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting Richard. Your right when it comes to your criticism of the movement as is in the form used as an uppercut. It would actually make more sense if you hit your own hand instead in the solo representation if that was the intended application. But in my experience sometime the Koreans might have used the forms solo movements as mnemonic devices and in some cases a mnemonic device helps you remember the information you want stored it doesn’t have to be «literal». When I had to learn the weapons safety rules in the army the mnemonic device we used had nothing to do with firearms safety. It was one sentence which translated to English becomes Ten Sour Toes Have We. Each first letter of the word in the sentence unlocks one safety rule. The first rule translated to English is Take or receive never a weapon without checking wether it is loaded or not (directly translated it still works in English :-D )
DeleteThis means that 20 years later I can still recite the weapons safety rules of the army without having actually needing them for the last 15 years or so.
On the other hand Sihak Henry Cho does demonstrate a pretty good application that fits nearly the solo representation of the movement where the pulling in hand pushed the opponents arm to the side (kinda like an inward block but closer range) and the uppercuts sneaks in from below. He never links the movement to Hyung, and the move in question was uppercut demonstrated in solo movement as a typical rising punch but the application photo of the movement fit so well. I’m guessing you have his book Secrets of Korean Karate Tae Kwon Do first published in 1968 and then reprinted a bunch of times?
actually his school was three blocks from my apartment before i moved
ReplyDeleteThat’s amazing Richard :-D Did you have a chance to train with him? I’m a fan of his books (even tracked down a self defense book and a short book in a children’s sport series he wrote) :-) Best regards from Ørjan
Deleteonly once as I had scheduling conflicts with college at the time, later moving on to GM Richard Chun. Truthfully, I believe that they managed and ran their schools very similarly as they would meet and speak often. Anyway, I still have the hardcover edition of Korean Karate I think published by Tuttle
ReplyDelete