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.


Korean Martial Arts Kwan Era

I am going to work my way backwards in time for once, and not just start at the beginning. This way it will be very clear why the Pyung Ahn Hyung (Pinan or Heian Kata) is relevant for Taekwondo and where they came from.

Lets first establish a simplified timeline of the history of KMA/Taekwondo:

It is important to remember that this is extremly simplified for the sake of this post. The Pyung Ahn series was fased out in what we today call Taekwondo, but while it is not a recognized part of Taekwondo these days it did stay with us for quite some time. The Kwan (schools) were opened from the 1940s onward (Chung Do Kwan, Song Mu Kwan, Yun Mu Kwan, Chang Mu Kwan before the Korean war followed by Ji Do Kwan and Oh Do Kwan after the Korean war. There were some other schools as well but they are often considered anex or sister schools). These Kwan all taught the Pyung Ahn series of forms within their syllabus originally. The first attempts to develop Korean made forms did not even start until the mid 50s, and by 1959 only four (as far as I know) had been made of what was to become the 24 recognized forms that the ITF uses today. The majority of the set was made in the mid 60s. Likewise the Palgwae forms were developed in the mid 60s, with the Taegeuk made in the early 70s. The older forms (like the Pyung Ahn series) was not really fased out until the newer forms sets was complete. In 1965 Choi Hong Hi published the very first English Language Taekwondo Textbook where he included his newly made 20 forms (still not 24), but he also included a lot of the older forms. So the Pyung Ahn series was still very much a part of Taekwondo in 1965. It seems as for the Kukki-Taekwondo they were fased out around 1967 with the completion of the new Palgwae and Black belt Poomsae, allthough they were rather common enough until the early 70s. Speaking to Korean 2nd and 3rd generation grandmasters some were taught the older forms as complimentary of the new Palgwae and Black Belt Poomsae, but when the Taegeuk were introduced they were really fased out.

If you look at the timeline you can say that Pyung Ahn series was taught from the founding of the Kwan (plural) in the 1940s until the end of the 1960s (roughly 30 years). The modern Taegeuk on the other hand has a (roughly) 50 year history with us. The thing is though that those who made the Palgwae, the Taegeuk, the Black Belt Poomsae and the Chang Hon Tul did so with the knowledge of the Pyung ahn and older forms in their background. These were the forms they knew and practised as white belts until the new forms were created. Therefore the Pyung Ahn especially, but other older forms as well were the foundation which upon the new forms were built. A cursury look at the Pinan/Heian/Pyung Ahn series will confirm this for any martial artist with the knowledge of the newer Korean form sets.

Like I said, some schools, or rather, most schools of Taekwondo dropped the older forms from their syllabus with the introduction of the newer Korean forms sets in the late 60s, early 70s, but there are suprisingly many individual Dojang around the world that has kept a few or many of the older forms and teach them along with the newer Korean forms sets. Lineages that go back to Richard Chun for instance (like Doug Cook) and his students kept and still keeps the older forms alive in the Mu Duk Kwan way of performing them, Master Kim Pyung Soo and students of his also has kept the older forms alive in the Chang Mu Kwan way of performing them and so on. In addition you have all the independent or semi independent Dojang around the world who also kept the forms alive, so when I say they were practised in the KMA in the 1940s and then (in Taekwondo's case anyway) were fased out in the late 60s/early 70s that is based on the mainstream, but it does not tell the whole truth.

In our sister martial arts like Tang Su Do and Su Bahk Do for instance many still teaches the older forms (Pyung Ahn series being one of them), so they might be "lost" in mainstream Taekwondo, but they are very much alive in the KMA even today.

Historical background

Now that I've worked my way backwards (modern era to founding of the Kwan in the 1940s onward) I will go back to the very start and work my way forward to the 1940s :-) As a quick aside Iain Abernethy told the history of the forms in a brilliant way as an introduction to the seminar I attended. Some will be based on his introduction, but much will be based on my own research as I allready wrote a lot for the book project that never came to be. 

In the mid to late 1800s Anko Itosu, a legendary Karate master who we can call the grandfather of modern Karate started working on a way to sumarize the combative methods of classical Tode (chinese hand or Tang Su in Korean). Based on the sources we have today this was a continuing process for Itosu until he settled on the series of 5 forms known as Pinan or Heian in Karate today. For instance in Choki Motobu's works he mentions visiting Itosu, and Itosu asked his present day students to perform a Kata (form) for his guest (Motobu). After viewing this demonstration Motobu said to Itosu that this was a form he had learned as Channan Kata but now it had been changed, wheras Itosu admitted that this was the way he wanted the form to be performed at that time and that he and his students had settled on Pinan as a name. 

Around 1905ish Itosu managed to introduce Karate into the Okinawan school system, and as it was a five year education it was natural that he used his already developed forms that had 5 forms in its series. One form for each year. This has led many authors and masters to say and believe that the Pinan/Heian/Pyung Ahn series are school children forms, that they have no applications and are only martial dances (so pretty much what most martial artists say about the Taekwondo forms :-P ). We know that Itosu taught the forms to his adult students, we know he developed them during a long process and we know based on what his students wrote about the forms that there was a notion that you would be able to defend yourself in most situation if you mastered these forms. 

A famous student of Itosu, Gichin Funakoshi, along with Kenwa Mabuni and a little later followed by Toyama Kanken and others introduced the forms set to mainland Japan and into the university system there. In the 1930s Gichin Funakoshi renamed the forms set to the Japanese reading Heian (still Pinan but the way a Japanese would say it), and swapped the two first forms around so what was Pinan Shodan (1) became Heian Nidan (2) and vice versa. The reason for changing this order was based purely on the solo performance of the form, as what is today Heian Shodan is simpler to perform than Heian Nidan, but several Kata Applications exponents believe that Itosu based his original order of the forms on the basis of how the applications work. Iain Abernethy for instance made a point of the first form (in Itosu's order) taught you how to knock people out targeting the jaw, the sides of the neck and basic limb control, while the second one got a little more into grappling and unbalancing of the opponent and so on. In his own words, learning the second form first was to learn more advanced applications before the basic stuff was taught. I dont have to say that Iain has stuck to Itosu's original order. 

The forms come to Korea

Funakoshi, Mabuni and Kanken taught many people their Karate in the Japanese Universities in the 

1920s, 30s and early 40s. Among them several Korean people who would later travel back to Korea and teach what they had learned by these Karate pioneers. Lee Won Kuk, Ro Byung Jik and Chun Sang Sup learned directly under Funakoshi and founded Chung Do Kwan, Song Mu Kwan and Yun Mu Kwan respectively. Choi Hong Hi learned Karate by a man named "master Kim", but it seems to have been the Shotokan style. Choi would of course go on to become the founder of the Oh Do Kwan, the ITF and being one of the most influential Korean masters in the post Korean war. Yun Byung In and Yun Kwae Byung both learned from Toyama Kanken, but Yun Kwae Byung also had learned under Kenwa Mabuni for several years. They would go on to found Chang Mu Kwan and Ji Do Kwan respectively. Hwang Kee would learn under Lee Won Kuk in his Chung Do Kwan, study books (perhaps by Funakoshi) and cross train with virtually anyone who would teach him, and he also had a very close working relationship with Yun Kwae Byung. Hwang Kee would of course found the Mu Duk Kwan school in Korea. When all of these people started teaching in Korea they usually used the Korean way of pronouncing Pinan, whih is Pyung Ahn. The name these forms are known as in KMA today is usually Pyung Ahn which is what I will refer to them as in the future installments of this series, but there are a few interesting exceptions.

What are the forms named in Korea

As I just wrote they are most often known as Pyung Ahn (followed by Chudan, Idan, Samdan, Sadan, Ohdan or first level, second level, third level etc). In Hwang Kee's 1958 book however he interestingly documented the forms under the name "pingan", which is as far as I know the Chinese way of pronouncing the characters of the name. In modern Su Bahk Do, Tang Su Do and even Taekwondo that has him in his lineage and has kept the forms they are as far as I can tell called Pyung Ahn today, so at some time after 1958 I believe Hwang must have started calling them by their Korean pronounciation. In Choi Hong Hi's 1965 book on the other hand he has chosen to keep the Japanese reading of the name so in that book these forms are documented under the Japanese name "Hei-An". I was very surprised by this as I always assumed that Choi being a Korean patriot and the nationalistic culture in the Martial Arts at the time had called them Pyung Ahn, but instead he documented them as "Hei-An". The other sources I have found all used Pyung Ahn however so I believe that was used by the far majority of schools.

And by that I will end part one. If you want to go directly to part 2 just click here