Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 6: Han Mu Kwan

This has proven to have been one of my most challenging series in what I can remember... But it is so worth it :-) Many many many years ago I started writing about the different schools of early taekwondo´s philosophies by looking at their kwan heon or school creeds. I abandoned the whole project for years, it was sitting in the "draft" folder of blogger.com. I then got the bright idea to start finishing stuff that I had started in 2025, and that served me well. I decided that the original concept of one long blogpost covering all of the Kwan was unfeasable, and so I divided the project up in smaller chunks and started with Chung Do Kwan in August  2025. Unfortunately I did manage to make a mistake in that one, so the whole project was sidelined until January 2026, and now we have covered Chung Do Kwan (part 1, and part 1.2), Song Mu Kwan (Part 2), Kang Duk Won (Part 3), Chang Mu Kwan (Part 4), Mu Duk Kwan (Part 6) and today we will be looking at possibly the most overlooked Kwan of them all; The Han Mu Kwan. 

Early Taekwondo was just Shotokan (it was and it wasn't)

One recurring comment I get over and over and over and over and over again when sharing something from the Kwan-era of Taekwondo or discussing anything technical about early Taekwondo are comments like: 

• "Because it was all just Shotokan"
• "All Kwan taught Shotokan"
• "They all taught Shotokan Kata"
• "FYI all early Taekwondo was just Shotokan"

One of the biggest problems with this is that it is a gross simplification of a very messy history. Its strength is that it does contain some truth, which is why I am not telling you outright that it is plain wrong, but it IS a simplification of history. A simplification that obscures technical discussions, evolution, understanding of the foundations of the modern Taekwondo systems and so on.

If you believe:

• The Ap Seogi (Short walking stance) is a new innovation that came with Taegeuk Poomsae.
• The Kukki Taekwondo blocking chambers are useless because they are not identical to modern Shotokan, and are based on Korean innovation.
• All Kwan were the same.

Then you have directly felt (unknowingly) the ramifications of the simplification of Taekwondo history. Does this make your yeopchagi (side kick) any weaker? No, but it does obscure greater understanding into the modern system seeing as there is a fundamental flaw in the understanding of the foundations. Now another thing that I recently pointed out; Projecting modern training experience in related systems backwards in time also gives us a whole host of problems. In that post I was hyper specific on one single technique. In this one I am going to talk very briefly about the different Kwan.

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 5: Mu Duk Kwan

We continue this series, looking at each Kwan (school) philosophy by zooming in on their creed, known in Korean as "Kwan Heon"  where "Heon" can be read as "Creed", but it can also be read as "guiding principles", "law code", "statute", "governing principles". In part(s) 1 (and 1.2) we focused on the Chung Do Kwan, then we visited the Song Mu Kwan in part 2, before moving on to Kang Duk Won in part 3 and then it was only natural to go to the Chang Mu Kwan in part 4. 

This time we will go to Hwang Kee´s Mu Duk Kwan and look at their Creed, or perhaps I should say revisit Mu Duk Kwan and their creed. You see, I have written about Taekwondo and Taekwondo-related material a long time now (on this blog in this language since 2011 (gasp!)) which will make this the 15th year of writing :-) Back in the end of 2015 and early 2016 I wrote a few posts on Hwang Kee and his 1958 textbook, and in one post in particular I deed a rather deep dive to the best of my ability on the 10 precepts and important points of physical and mental training (Translation of precepts 2016 post ). I am hopefully better at this now than back then 10 years ago), but I wanted to link back to the original post since there are some great comments on it (from people who are not me) and to show that this kind of work is something I have done for many many years now. 

Projecting modern training experience backwards in time is a real problem...

One of the major things holding a good understanding of our modern Taekwondo system back is a lack of understanding of its foundations. There are many reasons for this, some are born out of the national need of a newly liberated Korea to differentiate themselves from Japan, and tweak the history of a largely Japanese shaped practice into something Korean. This is something we can understand, appreciate and show empathy towards, if we look into newer Korean history and the Japanese Occupation. 

Another big problem is people projecting modern training experiences and assumptions based upon modern martial arts backwards through time and applying that to earlier less standardized systems. This goes both for people projecting modern experience within Taekwondo or Korean MA and modern experiences in related systems, i.e Karate and project that back into the 1940s. 

The first group gives rise to people saying stuff like: 

• "I was never taught any grappling in Taekwondo, so it does not exist"
• "All Kwan were the same"
• "There was no vital point knowledge in Korean MA"

The second group likewise give rise to myths and misconceptions.

• "Modern JKA Karate has no Bunkai, so there was no Bunkai in the 1930s and 40s"
• "Modern JKA Karate has no grappling, at least I never learned any, so Koreans did not learn any from Funakoshi".
• "I trained Karate and I learned how to use my hip when blocking in a different way than how modern Taekwondo does it, so Koreans must have changed it."

and the list goes on. 

Kwan-era Taekwondo grappling, was that a thing?

This year has been almost a complete Kwan-era bubble for me both on this blog, patreon and facebook. It has been a lot of fun, and lately I seem to have gained a little speed on facebook growth, which has me getting a lot of comments that I try to answer, but I have to do so briefly. Here there are no rules and I can go on as long as I like. So this time I will be talking a little on grappling in Kwan-era Taekwondo.

First, what is Kwan-era Taekwondo? To keep it brief, when I talk about Kwan-era Taekwondo I talk about all Kwan (schools) that would eventually take up the Taekwondo name, so I am talking about 1945-1970ish. Like the end of the Viking age (which many draw the line exactly at 1066), the Kwan era in practical terms continued after 1970. The unification happened in 1978, yet here we are in 2026 and people are still practicing Kwan specific Taekwondo and gaining Kwan dan grades. The unification and abolishment of Kwan and the Kwan existing only as social clubs will get their own posts down the line, don´t you worry. But for now let us return to grappling in the Kwan-era.

How do we know what we think we know? A good old rambling from Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings

This post just ramblings, and is not to be considered a serious article. It is done to clear my mind and to take you back around 2 years time. 

I had seriously started writing the manuscript for my first book "The Lost Forms of Oh Do Kwan Taekwondo Volume 1 Taegeuk 1-3 Hyeong" and had decided I should include an essential history for the major Kwan. I decided to check a few details on Chun Sang Sup in Korean sources because there were so little to be found in English sources. To my horror most English sources seem to link back to an old article I wrote many years ago... Well so off I went, and my surprise was great when I found that in serious academic discourse in Korean Chun Sang Sup early training is either totally glossed over, vague (he studied Karate in Japan) to wildly conflicting. 

It dawned on me then how much we think we KNOW in English language sources that Koreans themselves are very tentative to give a hard answer to. Not because Koreans lack sources or knowledge, but the opposite. Korean Taekwondo academics researching Taekwondo history have access to all manner of sources that we simply do not have. We are talking interviews, correspondence, paperwork, reports, certificates, pictures, newsreports, first hand accounts both oral and written history that history shows itself for what it often is; messy. 

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 4: Chang Mu Kwan

«All Kwan generally has the same Heon, but they express it in different ways»

-Cho Woon Sup (Quote from «Taekwondo» page 12) 

Seeing as how we looked at Kang Duk Won in Part 3 (the last post in this series) I only find it natural to stay within Yun Byung In´s lineage and therefore I will look to the other school that resulted from his teachings; The Chang Mu Kwan. In Part 3 we learned that the Chang Mu Kwan was the first Kwan established after the YMCA Kwonbeopbu, and the disappearance of Yun Byung In in the Korean war. Usually I have accompanied each of these posts with a history of the Kwan founder taken from my first book (available here by the way), but I will not repeat the same information on both parts, so if you have not yet read Post 3 I strongly recommend you do that before this one. In fact you might consider going back to Part 1, Part 1.2, Part 2, Part 3 in that order :-)