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 :-) 

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.