Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 3: Kang Duk Won

Yun Byung In is one of the more interesting Kwan founders to research in that he had multiple sources for his martial art. Unfortunately he disappeared from viewpoint of the south during the Korean war (1950-53), but Gm Kim Soo found out he had made a life for himself in North Korea, unable to return to the South after the country was divided up in 1953 in a truce. 

Yun Byung In not only made his mark in his own school, he worked as an instructor in the Yeon Mu Kwan Kong Su Do Bu together with Chun Sang Sup (who also disappeared during the Korean war) and while his exact school did not survive the war, he did in a way father two prominent Kwan or schools through his senior students; Chang Mu Kwan and Kang Duk Won. These two schools shared a lot of material both being from the same "ryupa"; Yun Byung In, but they did have their own Kwan Heon, creed or philosophy. In this post I want to look specifically on the Kang Duk Won one, and I guess it is only natural to go to Chang Mu Kwan in the next part. 

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 2: Song Mu Kwan

 In August 2025 I started on a quest to finish one of my more ambitious posts that I started, but never finished, a post where I shared and explained the different Kwan Creeds, or the underlying philosophy of each Kwan. Originally it was going to be one large post, but I never got around to finishing it, despite having some good notes and crude translations from a Korean source (which sadly does not exist anymore, but I have since found more to verify). In post 1 I tackled the Chung Do Kwan Creed, a creed that consists of 3 sentences. In post 1.2 I revisited the Chung Do Kwan after a great person took his time to point out I had made a mistake :-) So again thank you for that, I hope post 1.2 is better :-)

This, post, the third one, but I am calling it part 2 is focusing on Song Mu Kwan, a school that for some reason does not stand much out in discussions online. It seems that most people focus on Mu Duk Kwan, Chung Do Kwan, Oh Do Kwan (most often through an ITF lense) and sometimes Ji Do Kwan. Other schools like Chang Mu Kwan, Kang Duk Won, Han Mu Kwan, Song Mu Kwan etc are often overlooked. Song Mu Kwan in particular seems to often be written off as "Korean Shotokan". I do not possess any technical documents on Song Mu Kwan from the Kwan-era so I will not comment on how the techniques were performed, but we do have some oral testimony of the training, where it is said that Ro stressed striking the Dallyon Joo (Makkiwara or striking board, literally forging post), lifting weights (though I have yet to find details) and strong basics focusing on stopping power; "one strike - one kill" mentality. 

Luckily enough the Kwan Heon of Song Mu Kwan does survive and it is those I want to focus on today.

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:

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 :-) 

What I want for Christmas 😇

 If you have purchased my book and enjoyed it. I would be incredibly grateful if you left a review on amazon🙇🏻🙇🏻😇🙏

https://a.co/d/56y7rvy

If you haven't purchased it yet, what's stopping you? 😉

Previously untranslated material from the 1959 Taekwondo textbook soon available

(Post written by actual human, no A.I💻🚫)

🤷‍♂️ Did you know there were 24 patterns in the original Taekwondo Textbook from 1959?

😀Below is appendix 1 for my upcoming Patreon booklet (instant access for taekwondo nerd tier or 3usd if you don’t want to become a Patreon) coming December 24th.

📚This appendix simply lists the forms contained in the 1959 Taekwondo Textbook in order of appearance.

The booklet consists of:

✅ Full translation of Choi Hong Hi’s naming and lineages of Taekwondo forms with original text so you can check my work 

✅ Choi Hong Hi’s thoughts on the strength and differences between the different schools or lineages and how we should approach them

✅ Translation of each of the background/information on the forms in all 3 lineages or schools (Sorim-Ryu, Soryeong-Ryu, Changhon-Ryu 

✅ Look at first ever writings on the original Chang Hon patterns (Hwarang, Chungmu, Samil, Ulji, Unam),

These are different from later writings.

✅ Extensive commentaries and background information by yours truly on all of the text and all of the forms covered in the 1959 book.

All in all around 50(!) pages.

You can visit my Patreon and sign up as a Patreon (support me with 3usd a month and get access to everything I give out there, there’s already exclusive video tutorials and another booklet also based on the 1959 book available) or visit my Patreon shop on December 24th :-) 

https://www.patreon.com/TraditionalTaekwondoRamblings?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 1: Chung Do Kwan

My original teacher (Gm Cho Woon Sup) wrote some of the earliest Norwegian language Taekwondo

books out there. He also included some things that I have come to understand are very rare things in Taekwondo litterature. One of those things is the explanation of Taekwondo philosophy from the point of view of Ji Do Kwan (Wisdom Way School) which is the Kwan he hails from. In the text he explains that Kwan could be translated as School and that Heon could be translated as Life-directive. He went on explaining that there were many different Kwan and each had their own Heon, but they had the same underlying principles. That section in his book is one of the reasons I started looking into the different Kwan all those years ago, and in this series I want to explore the different Kwan Heon that the different Kwan has. If you saw the last post on this blog I can tell you that this post was started in 2016, and is a great example of me starting way too big and never finishing it. This time I am confident and know that I can tackle it piece by piece. So first Kwan out of the gate is Chung Do Kwan.