While waiting for an oppertunity to retake photos and take new photos for new material for my upcoming ABCs of Practical Poomsae applications I kinda started with a smaller book project which is also coming along nicely. I will keep the cards tight to my chest for the time being, but I am working a different way on this one, writing it from scratch and trying to format it and polish it as I go rather than the way I did with the ABCs of Practical Poomsae applications which has grown to about 125 pages manuscript but has yet to be formatted. Anyhow, as part of this smaller book project which is veeeeeeeery niche and I doubt it will see much, I decided that for the introduction part I needed to mention and give a brief overview on each of the major Kwan or schools that opened up from 1944-1950s. It was grueling work because I needed to re-evaluate what I know, new sources has been made available and in some cases I really had to change what I believed. This post which focuses on Chun Sang Sup is a very good example of this since I was told and read that he trained in Shotokan Karate under Gichin Funakoshi, that he taught Shotokan Kata, and that Yun Kwae Byung when he reopened it as Ji Do Kwan continued teaching the Shotokan forms despite him not being of Shotokan lineage. Modern Ji Do Kwan schools do in some cases teach Shotokan Kata as their heirloom forms, but the few people I that I reached out to who actually answered admitted that they read the same as I did, and went out and learned Shotokan Kata and taught them as Ji Do Kwan Hyeong. This is what happens when we make assumptions about history, and I am betting that all this info about Chun practising Shotokan comes from one work which has influenced writers all over the place.
The other thing that made this difficult was that I decided to keep each Kwan history brief, and if you know anything about me, making me write or talk about Taekwondo history is to open up the flood gates. I never shut up or stop writing:-P So if this has intrigued you click the read more button to read a short summary of Chun Sang Sup´s history and the founding of the Yun Mu Kwan Kong Su Do Bu.
The following quote is directly from the introduction to my super secret book project:
"Chun Sang Sup and Yun Mu Kwan
Chun Sang Sup (c. 1920–c. 1950) was born into an affluent Korean family. As a young man, he studied Judo in Korea, a martial art formally introduced alongside Kendo in 1922 during the Japanese occupation. Seeking to further his education, he traveled to Japan in 1930 and enrolled at Takushoku University.
There is scholarly disagreement over which Karate style Chun studied. According to Park Chul Hee and Lee Chong Woo, he trained in Shito-Ryu under Kenwa Mabuni. However, Lee Ho Sung (author of Korean Martial Arts Conquer the American Continent), Kim Young Seon, and Yi Gyo Yun assert that he studied Shudokan and Goju-Ryu under Toyama Kanken and Chojun Miyagi. While Miyagi is not known to have resided permanently in mainland Japan, he did travel there periodically to teach, including at universities in the region where Chun studied.
Chun returned to Korea near the end of World War II and began practicing Judo at Yun Mu Kwan. In 1946, he was invited to teach Karate at the school and established the Yun Mu Kwan Kong Su Do Bu (윤무관 공수도부, 潤武館 空手道部), meaning “Karate division of Yun Mu Kwan.” Tragically, Chun disappeared during the Korean War (1950–1953) and was never heard from again.
Despite his disappearance, Yun Mu Kwan played a pivotal role in the development of Taekwondo. It later gave rise to two influential Kwans: Ji Do Kwan and Han Mu Kwan." End quote.
Chun Sang Sup has intrigued me for decades, seeing as I have a direct link back to the Ji Do Kwan (and therefore Yun Mu Kwan) through one of my teachers. He founded a Kwan, yet we know so very little. Kang & Lee in their Modern History Of Taekwondo mentions he was an intellectual who almost always wore suits, they also mention a tight bond and friendship between him and Yun Byung In. Still we can read much on all the other Kwan founders, yet there is so little on Chun that I am starting to suspect that there might be a reason for the little material we have on him. Seeing as I have no evidence of my suspicions I will keep them to my self, but I will say that when topics or people are almost actively "silenced" about in Korean culture there is often a reason for it.
Anyway, what I originally learned about Chun studying Shotokan is almost certainly false information, so I thought I could open up with this one and see if I could rectify the situation. This version here also neatly explains the trio of Chun, Yun and Yun working together as they all likely practised with Toyama Kanken and or Kenwa Mabuni. Having studied in the same area under the same teacher(s) it is not a coincidence that Yun Byung In helped teach at the Yun Mu Kwan, nor his close friendship with Chun, nor is it strange that Yun Kwae Byung took over the mantle as Kwanjang and reopened the school as Ji Do Kwan after the Korean war. It also explains why the Ji Do Kwan version of the old Taegeuk Hyeong (NOT POOMSAE) was so different to Shotokan´s Taikyoku Kata when if Chun did practise at Shotokan you would believe it would be identical or at least very similar to Shotokan Taikyoku Kata. I now believe that the forms practised in Yun Mu Kwan and later in Ji Do Kwan might have been much closer to Shito Ryu Kata or Shudokan Kata than Shotokan. This might not matter to many, but for someone trying to research the roots of Taekwondo and maybe get a sense of what was practised in the older Kwan it matters greatly.
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