Keeping up with the Taegeuks (Oh Do Kwan versions and not Taegeuk poomsae)

Not sure if the headline makes sense. I have worked on Taegeuk 1-3 as documented in "Better Karate for Boys" by Sihak Henry Cho in 1970 and published them little by little over May 2025. I thought it was important to get them out there because I was sitting on what might be the only verifiable Ji Do Kwan Hyung as practised in Ji Do Kwan in the Kwan era. I was actually afraid something would happen to me so I could not finish and then the forms would have died out. Now I know at least two people will keep training and teaching them :-) But working with the Taegeuk Hyung of Ji Do Kwan made me very curious about the Oh Do Kwan variations. 

You see in the 1965 book on Taekwondo which Choi Hong Hi published they are not mentioned nor included in the text, despite many of the Karate Kata still being included at that point. When looking at the older forms of the Oh Do Kwan most people gravitate toward the 1965 book simply because it is easy to get, and because it is written in english. The 1959 book which Choi Hong Hi also wrote but in Korean is also a great resource, but since it is in Korean most people who get to it look at the pictures but dont really take a deep dive into it. It might come as a surprise to those reading the 65 book that the 59 book does contain instructions (and illustrations) on the three taegeuk forms, but this time it is obviously the Oh Do Kwan versions of the forms. Were they copied directly from Shotokan? Did Choi Hong Hi and his team at Oh Do Kwan change them in any way? Read on if you want to learn the Oh Do Kwan versions or simply get an idea of how Taegeuk Hyung 1-3 were practised in different Kwan. 

Part 3: The lost Ji Do Kwan Taegeuk Hyung (not the modern taegeuk poomsae)

This is a series on the original taegeuk forms or Taikyouku Kata that were practised in the Kwan era. More specifically the version practised in Ji Do Kwan. I strongly suggest you click here for part 1 and start the series there as I will asume you already have the knowledge shared within part 1 and 2 :-)

Part 2: The lost Ji Do Kwan Taegeuk Hyung (not the modern taegeuk poomsae)

 This is Part 2 of a series. I strongly suggest you click here for part 1 and start there, as I will assume you know the information contained within that part. 

In part 2 I will continue documenting the original tae keuk hyung of Ji Do Kwan, not to be confused with the modern taegeuk poomsae series. Tae Keuk Hyung is a series of three forms, all following the same floor pattern (an inverted "H-shape") and all consisting of fairly basic stances and attacks. The first form in the series which we covered in part 1 is identical to Shotokan's Taikyoku Shodan (1) Kata, move for move, and even the Kihap points. Its when we come to the 2nd and 3rd form we see differences. When I first stumbled across these I looked at the first form which was illustrated (the 2nd and 3rd were text only) and I recognised the form as Shotokan's Taikyoku Kata 1. I therefore assumed given Chun Sang Sup's background in Shotokan that the Tae Keuk forms were simply shotokan copies. Years later when revisiting them since I thought it was a tragedy that the Ji Do Kwan forms were lost (or at least it does seem like they were) I was hoping that there might be something different about them and it was. So without further adu let us look at how the 2nd form of the Tae Keuk Hyung were performed. 

Part 1: The lost Ji Do Kwan Taegeuk Hyung (not the modern taegeuk poomsae)

 In my last post I walked you through a short history of the Ji Do Kwan and the issues we have when it comes to lineage, which is why I believe that we have lost all the original Ji Do Kwan Hyung as they were practised in the Kwan-era (in Ji Do Kwan's case 1946-1966 since they adopted Palgwae and then Taegeuk forms). The students focused very much on the practical applications of the basic techniques as used in sparring and the school became legendary for its fierce fighters. Later they joined the Korean Taekwondo movement fullheartedly in 1966, and got to have their own representatives in the poomse comitte who made the Taegeuk poomse series of 8 forms and the new Koryo poomse which replaced the older Koryo Hyung made by the orignal comitte. Why they left the rest of the Judanja poomse largely in peace I do not know. This focus on the sparring applications, and then the fullhearted joining of what was to become modern Kukki-Taekwondo unfortunatly came at a steep (in my opinion) price; The loss of the original Ji Do Kwan Hyung as practised in the Kwan-era. The school originally had instructors comming with dan ranks from Shotokan (most possibly), Shudokan Karate and Shito-Ryu Karate, or in other words their knowledgepool flowed from Gichin Funakoshi, Kenwa Mabuni and Toyama Kanken. All Karate legends, and this wide array of "knowledge rivers" is rather unique in Kwan terms. Therefore the loss of their forms is truly a tragedy. When going over some of the more obscure books in my collection I revisited Sihak Henry Cho's book called Better Karate for Boys". It is a short and simple book covering some stances and basic techniques and basic facts like what to expect from a class, how to fold your training uniform, how to tie your belt etc. One of the things that he also covered were three "Tae Keuk Hyung" or taegeuk hyung which is how we would have spelled it today. 

Short discussion on the learning of Poomsae

I have thought about this on and off for a very long time now. Actually I started thinking about this at the very beginning of when it dawned on me how Poomsae contained so much more than block kick punch methods of how to deal with combat. I quickly realized that the most logical way of training and teaching Poomsae was with application being taught first or at least along side the form move for move. This was later "confirmed" or at least some Karate researchers agreed with me (Patrick Mcarthy for instance) that Kata was taught after the applications had been mastered, as a way to remember them and as a solo excersise format. I have sometimes thought that if I ever get to "master level" (that would be 4th Dan in my org) I should start my own Dojang or perhaps take much more responsibility in the one I currently train and study in, and one thing I was wondering was if I should revamp the way we teach Poomsae. I have shared the way I view Taegeuk Il Jang quite extensively so my future students could in theory learn at least one "good" application for each move in the Poomsae with partner drills and live testing of some if not all applications very soon after they started training.

The Original Koryo Hyung Part 2: Kim Daeshik version

In part 1 I wrote a general overview on the history of the form, who developed it, the different main
versions out there, and then I promised that in this part I would look at the performance of the form itself. I have selected the Kim Daeshik version to be the first one, as this is the oldest published version out there. 

The book "Karate and personal self defense" written by Kim Daeshik and Tom Leland back in 1971. If you remember the form was developed between 1965-1967 before it was replaced in 1972, so while the book is very close to the making of the form, there is a little gap between the introduction of the form and the publication of the book. As for Kim Daeshik himself, I think he is one of the best kept secrets of "Kukki-Taekwondo". He is no longer with us, and I am very sad that his work did not get more widespread recognition because he did write some awesome material during his career. The book this form is from is not one of them though, but it does contain a few gems like the original Koryo. I will try to write more about Kim Daeshik in the future and give a few book recommendations, because seriously some of his works are must reads. This post also lets me introduce my own teacher; Master Erling Oppedal. I sometimes get negative feedback on this blog since I am "rocking the boat" so I have purposefully kept him a little anonymous on this blog, but I asked him if he could pose for the illustrations for this post and I was so happy when he said yes :-D 

So with those introductions out of the way let us jump into the form itself :-) 

The Original Koryo Hyung Part 1; an overview (Will the real Koryo please stand up???)

 This will be the first post of a small series, focusing on the history, development and performance of the original Koryo form. I will refer to this as "Koryo Hyung" for the remainder of this series to not confuse readers with the normal, mainstream, "new" Koryo Poomsae which most practise today. So when I write "Koryo Hyung" that is the old one, and Koryo Poomsae is the current one.

As a Taekwondo Nerd I have always read a lot of Taekwondo history, and one thing caught my interest many many years ago was a reference that looked almost the same in all articles and books on modern Taekwondo history. Especially if the book or article touched upon the development of the Korean Taekwondo Association forms (the Poomsae we practise today). It was something along these lines: "Around 1965-67 a committee consisting of representatives from most major Kwan (schools) developed the Palgwae and Judanja (Black belt) Poomsae. In 1967-1972 the same committee with the addition of representatives from Ji Do Kwan and Mu Duk Kwan developed a new series of forms. In 1972 the Palgwae and Koryo were replaced by the new forms, the Taegeuk series and a new Koryo form." This or a close variation of this quote appeared everywhere and it bugged me to no end. You see the Palgwae were replaced but they did live on. I could find videos, books, articles, webpages with detailed descriptions of them with no problem. A few of the books in my Martial Arts library were bought precisely because of my interest in what these forms were like. Not so with the original Koryo. 

Controversies in the development of the Black Belt Poomsae

 Once I read a long article on the process of becomming a black belt in Kukki-Taekwondo and what you should focus on in your training for each Dan rank. This was linked in great detail to the Poomsae assigned to the rank, and the symbolism that the Poomsae was made with in mind. The fact that the Black Belt Poomsae has a name and a philosophy or theoretical background assigned to it is written in stone in many masters minds, but as I will demonstrate in this blog post, things in Taekwondo are never written in stone. This post might be a little controversial for some but it is time someone shed some light on this to a wider audience, and it might also save a few people from going completly down a rabbit hole.

Pyung Ahn Hyung Series Part 3: Pyung Ahn Chudan (1), Funakoshi Version

Image Source: Karate Do
Kyohan
1935 edition

In my last part of the series I promised I would start looking more into the form(s) themselves, and If you have read Part One (click here to get there), or Part 2 (click here to go to part 2) you will allready know that Funakoshi changed the teaching order and why he did it. You will also know that all the Kwan that I have found documentation on the Pyungahn series has taught them in the Funakoshi order. So what I have done here is to read the 1922, 1935 and 1958 book of Funakoshi where he describes or demonstrates this form. I made a video performance based on the form, and then I used snapshots of that video to document the form here. So you will get both video, pictures and text in this post (a little something for everyone).
this part will focus on the first form in the Funakoshi teaching order; Pyungahn Chudan Hyung. In Okinawan Karate, or just about all Karate styles apart from Shotokan this would be Pinan Nidan (2), but for us and Shotokan it will be the first form.

Pyung Ahn Hyung Series Part 2: Tidbits about the forms

In this part of the series I want to share a few tidbits that I missed in Part 1, such as the meaning

behind the name, a few musings from Iain Abernethy on the reason (or part of the reason) why Itosu chose the name he ended up with, debunk a myth about Hwang Kee and the forms series and possible more stuff as they enter my mind. In the upcomming posts in the series I will go into the forms themselves, but there were a few things that I thought I should tackle before starting looking at the forms themselves. So if I have awaken your curiousity, and you forgive my many spelling mistakes please click the read more button to see more :-)

Pyung Ahn Hyung Series Part 1: History

I recently (at the time of writing) got back from a seminar with Iain Abernethy focusing on the
combative applications from the Heian/Pinan Kata (often called Pyung Ahn in Korean). A few years back I toyed with the idea of making a book demonstrating the differences between how the different Korean Kwan (schools or styles) performed their versions of the Pyung Ahn and Chulgi series. The reason for this is that I collected and studied all kinds of older texts from Mu Duk Kwan, Chung Do Kwan, Oh Do Kwan etc and I was getting a lot of different material that is not generally seen today in my personal "library". One of these things that I found fascinating was how the Hyung was very similar, yet they had their small differences accross the different schools. When I saw that Iain Abernethy was going to hold a seminar in the south east part of Norway I knew I had to attend that seminar. I have followed his work for probably more than a decade now, articles, books, youtube, podcasts, Iain is prolific and a great sharer of knowledge, and I find his stuff to be very interesting. Since he was going to focus on the Pinan/Heian series I thought I could brush off on the forms I had collected notes on, but never finished the project so that I came "prepared" to the seminar. Since I have been working on learning the solo performance of the series, revisiting my old notes and now learned a ton of applications on them from the most best known "applications guy"across styles I thought that perhaps some of my readers might be interested in learning a little more about them, and how the versions vary among different schools. I abandoned the book project because I never managed to find a version from all of the major Kwan, and I really thought that if I were to charge money in the form of a book, it really should contain versions from all the major Kwan and not just 2-4 Kwan.

Taegeuk Il Jang, Solo performance + Applications

I have made several videos on Taegeuk Il Jang over the last year, and as I have done in written form on this blog I have covered the form move for move throughout the complete Poomsae with practical applications :-) In this blog post I thought I could make a convenient way of gathering all this into one place. When I get a little more time I will try to make a "master post" where there are pictures, text, history, videos of performance and videos on applications in one place, but this short one will do in the meantime :-)

Chulgi i (2) Dan Hyung , Solo Performance and short commentary

Following up from my last blog post here is a clip of me performing another hybrid or personal version of Chulgi 2. These series of forms (there are 3 in the complete set) is in my view remarkable in that they most possibly represent three generations of great masters thoughts and ideas. The reason I say that is that lineages in Karate that goes back to "Tode" Sakugawa but does not go through "Bushi" Matsumura and Anko Itosu practise only the first in the series. This means that most likely Sakugawa invented or imported the form that was to become the first in the series. Again if we look to Karate lineages going through "Bushi" Matsumura (a student of Sakugawa), but not through Itosu, we see that these lineages usually practise the first two forms but not the last in the series, supporting a claim that the second form was invented as a commentary by Matsumura. The third form is practised by lineages going through both Sakugawa -> Matsumura -> Itosu making it likely that Itosu made the last one. So three forms containing the knowledge of three legendary masters and fighters. Some might it find it interesting that Othsuka, the founder of Wado-Ryu Karate who was a student of Gichin Funakoshi and Choki Motobu decided that the first form in the series was one of his absolute favorites, while the second and third one was dropped because in his view they were next to useless i I remember his words correctly. This explains why Wado-Ryu Karate only practise the first one, eventhough they come from an Itosu lineage.

Chulgi Chudan Hyung; historical background, performance and more

I have been practising Chulgi Chudan Hyung for a few years now, and it is still giving me all kinds of ideas and lessons in mechanics. The other day the schools opened up after a looooong summer and we could finally start up formal training again, and so I met up early to do some self training and I also used the oppertunity to shoot a little video of myself performing Chulgi, Taegeuk il jang and taegeuk i jang. Taegeuk Il jang I shot from different angles etc, and I intend to make a video where the performance is done, interjected with clips of applications. For this post however I am sharing what I can only call a hybrid or personal version of Chulgi Chudan Hyung.

My first video mini lecture; What is the difference between Hyeong, Tul and Poomsae?

This is my first ever video mini lecture. It clocks in at 16 minutes, it was unscripted, and I took it as a
fun challenge since I am way more comfortable to write English, than to speak it. It became very "Norwenglish" as a result, but I think it is understandable. If not I have texted the whole clip (so you can even see it without sound as long as you turn on the captions option on youtube). I am still a beginner when it comes to editing video, but I managed to cut out the most fumbling bits, and I managed to insert some illustrations to break up the monotomy of me talking and to give you something to view besides my ugly mug.

I talk about the history, the meanings, translations, reasons why the different organisations uses different terms and much more in this clip. Did you know that we have two different terms Poomse and Poomsae? Do you know the difference between them and what they mean? Do you know when they changed from Poomse to Poomsae and why? Do you know when Choi Hong Hi changed from Hyeong to Tul? That and a whole lot more is in the clip:-) If you enjoy it, and want to see more please subscribe to my youtube channel, and or share the clip with any taekwondo nerd that you know:-)

Is Keumgang a basic form?

Reading through an online discussion on an old forum the other day I came across question regarding

Palgwae Poomsae or rather who still teaches them. It was an old thread, but one of the first replies came from a 6th Dan school owner who said and I am slightly paraphrasing here:

"We teach Taegeuk and Koryo to black belt level, and then have everyone learn Palgwe 1-8 along with Keumgang for their 2nd Dan. Keumgang is such a basic form to study at that level so they need the additional material".

I am all for perserving history, and allthough I have never formally studdied the Palgwae set, I do see their appeal, and they also represent the first form set made by most of the all Kwan. I used to want to study them, but the more I studied the Taegeuk and all the Judanja (Black belt forms) I was given in Korea, plus now my teachers own creation (Soak Am Ryu Poomsae) and some of the old Kwan forms (most noteably Chulgi Chudan Hyung, Won (Original) Koryo Hyung and Ban Wol Hyung) I have more than enough for a lifetime study. I still might do it one day, but I do not yearn it like I used to do, back when I was a real and truly a forms collector. But how someone can say that Keumgang Poomsae is so basic that it is taught almost as an afterthought is beyond me.

The relationship between sparring and forms, a Taekwondo perspective

This article was originally published in Totally Taekwondo Magazine 1st of July 2016. It looks at Taekwondo litterature ranging from 1958 to 2010 and looks into how Taekwondo textbooks have defined sparring and forms individually and then tackles the age old quesiton wether the two have a relationship between them. I hope you will find this interesting, and since this is meant to be a serious article and not "just a blogpost" it contains references to all the books I have used for this article, as well as exactly where each of my quotes has been found. Earlier I have done a lousy job With this, just providing the person behind the quote and maybe a title, but if a reference is to have true value it needs to pinpoint a location so that people can go and check all my claims, and do it easily instead of having to sift through a whole book each time. It is my hope that more will try to write and produce more serious Taekwondo litterature over time so that we can elevate the martial art we all love and respect. I might not be a scholar but I do try, and this is the result of just that.

Warm up for Taekwondo

I got an interesting question the other day when I chatted with a friend about general Taekwondo training, and the conversation turned toward warm up. This is something that is often a missunderstood part of training, and it also comes with its own myths as well. I like to believe that Taekwondo being in the Olympics has made more instructors aware of sport science and that we generally have moved on from the 1950s/60s idea of a warm up based on army training. I see that modern Dojang that leans toward Olympic sparring is actually more up to date on this area, and holds an advantage over "traditional" oriented Dojang around the world. It is more often than not those "traditional" oriented Dojang that does not understand what a warm up is for in my own opinion. There is a lot of heavy science and theory behind what a good warm up should be, and what the purpose of a warm up is.

However instead of sharing a lot of dry research material, and a lot of theory, I would rather just share my thoughts on the topic of warm up, both its purpose, its length and proposed drills, and why those drills have been selected.

Guest Post: The Secret to Winning All Your Fights...with Taegeuk Il Jang!

Intro by Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings:

Josh has a great blog at https://tkdfighter.wordpress.com/ which I full heartidly support and

recommend that you check out. Especially if you like my blog because me and Josh have many similar thoughts yet different enough that we also disagree on stuff. He has a bunch of interesting articles on his blog and is one of the few people on the world wide web that actually writes indepth articles on Kukki Taekwondo! Among all the blogs that pay lip service to Taekwondo being a martial art and not just a sport Josh`s blog is an oasis in the desert. That he now has written a guest post exclusively for Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings is a great honor for me and it is like all his usual blog articles a thought provocing read that I am sure many will apreciate. The post below is not going to be posted anywhere else so this is truly a special post to have here:-) Below is how Josh view his relationship with Taegeuk Il Jang :-)

Taegeuk Il Jang - A love letter.

This will be a busy few months for me. I have taken upon myself to start teaching in the Dojang I study in every Friday evening for the grown ups. I will be teaching the syllabus of the organisation I
belong to (Traditional Taekwondo Union) with (hopefully) my own thoughts and spin on things. I hope to be able to use a couple of minutes after the training session is over to either film or take pictures of some of the apps I use for the forms as practical applications for Poomsae beyond the normal kick block punch ones. I am not sure as of which media I will end up with but currently I lean towards pictures as that would allow me to make the posts into articles for this blog as well as Totally Taekwondo Magazine (and others like Moosin).

But before I start diving into Applications of Taegeuk Il Jang I thought it would be fun to write a little about the form and why exactly Taegeuk Il Jang as opposed to any of the other forms.