Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 7.1: Ji Do Kwan

 

I have been steadily giving out posts on the Kwan Heon or Kwan Creeds over the course of 2026. This time we have come to one of the Kwan I have a direct lineage back to through one of my original teachers Grandmaster Cho Woon Sup; The Ji Do Kwan. I will draw on both of his early books entitled Taekwondo 1 and Taekwondo 2, as well as a phamplet assembled by Grandmaster Al Cole and the 2015 historical collection phamplet I have been using as a base throughout the series. I will make sure to make it clear what I got where, and especially so if they are conflicting. 

Compared to Han Mu Kwan, the Ji Do Kwan is very well known and documented, and since this Kwan (and the Oh Do Kwan) is the school I have a very personal connection to I have been both looking forward to it and dreaded to start the post. 

I will as I have routinely said throughout the whole project, I am not fluent in Korean, nor am I a professional translator. Therefore any mistake here is mine and mine alone. And with that out of the way, let us look at Ji Do Kwan, their history and philosophy.

Balsaek - Bassai a peculiar movement discussion

There is a great upside to embracing your Kwan-roots fully, and that is the opening up in rich forms material and historical forms material that is no longer normally preserved in the mainstream Kukki-Taekwondo or modern ITF curricula. This post is not about proving one version right and another wrong. It is about tracing how one movement in Balsae/Bassai was described and performed across Japanese and Korean sources, and what that tells us about Kwan-era transmission.

One of the very oldest forms in the Oh Do Kwan repertoire is Balsaek Hyeong. It is also perhaps the oldest form I know and practice (along with Cheolgi / Tekki / Naihanchi and Ban Wol / Hangetsu / Seisan). 

"The Balsaek forms come in two versions, large and small. The distinctive feature of this form is that the blocking hand is quickly turned and transformed into another block, thereby shifting one from a disadvantageous position into an advantageous one. Its energy resembles the action of piercing through an enemy’s defensive fortifications, and from this comes the name “Balsaek.” - Choi Hong Hi 1959

It is a very interesting form, and among the forms that Anko Itosu drew from when he developed the Pyeongahn / Pinan / Heian Forms. We see the form echoed even into modern Taekwondo Poomsae. In Koryo Poomsae for instance you have right after a side kick, placing the foot down you do an upset low section spear hand thrust with one hand while the other one comes in front of the opposite shoulder in a long front stance. You then move the front foot back while pulling the "spearhand-thrusting-hand" back and up (to your hip in modern Koryo) while performing a low block. 

This short sequence originated quite possibly in Bassai Kata or Balsaek Hyeong, before being mined to be included in Pyeonghan 5. One of these two then served as inspiration or knowledge-well for the originator(s) of modern Koryo Poomsae when it comes to this short sequence. I am not claiming a direct documented borrowing here, only that the technical resemblance is suggestive when viewed against the background of the KTA forms committee.

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.