Geom or Do? How language changes in martial arts

Hi there :-) I have been going full Muyedobotongji rabbit hole these last few months :-P I have posted a lot of stuff on facebook, and one of the things I wrote was that the Sang H. Kim's translation of the Muyedobotongji is a wonderful resource, but it does contain flaws and errors, and the biggest "flaw" for me was that he did not include any Hanja or Hangul for any of the Korean terms. This means that you get quite a few paragraphs containing interesting and vital information that comes out as pure guibberish. The section that annoyed me at that time of writing was in the Yedo chapter where he translates: 

"There are four strategic fighting methods in Chosun; ahnbub, kyukbub, sebup and jabup." 

Now reading this you get four strategic fighting methods and four words that you have no idea what it is supposed to be. Had he included the hanja and or hangul you might be able to use this to research into the matter and come up with something, but since there are only latin alphabet and he does not transcribe into it following a strict transcription system you really can just guess at that he means. Even if you speak Korean this makes the job impossible and it would really be so much better if he or the publisher could just include the terms in the Hanja at least. Hanja is traditional characters of Chinese origin by the way.

Product review on Training Katana (Iaito) from Ryan Swords

You can click the link below if you want to go directly to YouTube :-) 

https://youtu.be/Y9E5E4dRoOQ

Product review on a training sword from Ryan Swords. Unsharpened Katana (Iaito), Ryan-1316. Short answer: I’m very pleased with it 🙂 You want the long answer? Go check out the video and I’ll give you an 11 minute rant 😂

Solo Sword Training [Yedo24Se]

https://youtu.be/RH-CFi5Db7g

 Filmed myself so I could get feedback from my teacher :-) It was a lovely evening with very nice weather :-) In my last two posts I’ve written about Yedo 24 Se it’s history and a list on the different postures (we train each posture as a mini form).  It’s still a work in progress and there’s a ton of things that needs improving but I thought you guys and gals might want to see the forms in real life and not just old illustrations :-)  I do each one 4 times slow for technique and then 4 times with “intent”. It’s not all 24 here but rather 15 (or 14 as I managed to skip one) 

Yedo Ishipsa Se (List, illustrations, hangul)

Open Wing Posture

In my last post on Yedo Ishipsa Se (Yedo 24 postures) I shared the historical background, the sources we know of, the introduction into Korean Military Manuals and an overview of the system itself. What I failed to include was a list over the postures. I want to make clear that in the system I practice we regard each "Se" which is often translated as posture as a mini form consisting of 3-8 moves. For instance in the first posture: Keo Jeong Se (Kettle lifting posture) we don't just asume a pose, we move into a starting pose, do a diagonal cut from that pose, into a horizontal cut before ending with a centerline downward cut. 3 techniques for that first "posture". This applies to each and every "posture" in the  Ishipsa ban Muye Kyeongdang (which is where I get all my weapon training and muyedobotongji stuff from. As always: I remind everyone I am a yellow belt :-P You should probably keep that in  mind :-)

Yedo24se (short sword 24 forms) history and background

 I've written before about my study into weapons and how I relate that to "my" taekwondo. The last two years I have delved deeper down into that rabbit hole and I have gotten much more hands on instruction (as well as a lot of online training) and so I wanted to start sharing this aspect on this blog too. If you think that is inapropriate as this is a taekwondo blog please say so in the comments and if I get a lot of feedback like that I will open a seperate blog on that aspect of my training and study. If I don't hear anything I will just keep posting that stuff here as well as what people consider "taekwondo". After all this is a blog on "my" Taekwondo so in my mind it fits right in here  :-) 

This time I would like to write a little bit about Yedo Ishipsa Se (Yedo = Short sword, Ishipsa =24 and Se = posture loosely translated). This is a system consisting of 24 illustrations that first appears in print in 1621 in Wu Bei Zhi or as the Korean calls it the Mubiji. The book is an incredible big publication, and it is said to be the biggest Chinese military writing of all time. In it the author Mao Yan-yi (or Mo Won-ui  in Korean) includes an art he labels Choson Sebup (Korean Sword Technique).