Friday, 9 January 2026

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 1.2: Chung Do Kwan

 


This post is "Part 1.2" so not part 2 :-) You see I already wrote about the Kwan Heon (Kwan or school creed) of Chung Do Kwan back in 2025. This post is both a continuation of that post and a revisit. So please read part 1 by clicking here before you read part 1.2. In that post I go briefly through the history of Chung Do Kwan which I have taken from my book (click here to buy) where I also share the history of several more Kwan (and you can read those on the blog as well). Anyway, here is the kicker: I provided my own translation of the Korean text and it was (slightly) flawed as pointed out by a brilliant commenter who took the time to comment on this outdated blogging format. Thanks to him I had to reevaluate my translation and saw where I had gone wrong. It does change the sentiment a little, but overall the meaning is in my opinion the same. And my original translation is way better than the other ones circulating the web. So here goes, part 1.2 Chung Do Kwan Creed revisited:

Tuesday, 6 January 2026

New Year, Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings Reflections

We now write 2026, and as we say in Norway: New year - New opportunities :-) I used to be good at these kinds of posts, looking back at the old year and write about the upcoming plans. I have failed to do this for several years now :-P You got to go back to 2019 for a similar January post. 

A.I. and the future of Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings

The A.I wave has hit us hard in 2025, to the point that even in martial arts media we are drowning in a.i slop, both in video, articles, blogs and I guess it is just a matter of time, books. Google has started trying to answer searches not with links going to blogs like mine, but first A.I, then sponsored pages, then "trusted pages" such as reddit and then perhaps you might find my posts. This is the current trend now, and I found myself thinking, what can Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings possibly offer people in 2025 and forward? I can not in any way shape or form compete with a.i driven blogs, and I KNOW for a FACT that there are several martial artists out there using A.I to publish articles which reads like they have written a prompt and published whatever Chatgtp had written as their own work. I make at most a few posts a month, someone using A.I can churn out 10+ articles every single day. 

I confess to have used Chatgtp in a purely editiorial fashion for a few posts in 2025 and I have used A.I to make a few thumbnails, but whenever I have used chatgtp for writing I first write myself the whole text, then I ask chatgtp to clean up the language, flow and spelling errors. I then work through each paragraph going back and forth to make it just right. The end result is that I do not actually save as much time using a.i, but I do get a text that reads as an actual human being has written it. 

Then it hit me: I can not compete with A.I, but I have something that A.I and A.I-heavy users do not have: Authenticity :-)