Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 8.2: Oh Do Kwan (and ITF)

This is a part of perhaps the longest blog series I have ever made. If you are here for Oh Do Kwan specifically I really recommend you start with the previous post in this series where I covered Oh Do Kwan from founding until the Vietnam War (Army manual 1966). Through 2026 we have gradually covered what is usually called the 9 original Kwan of Taekwondo. Here is a quick overview, click on the one you want to read:

Part 1 Chung Do Kwan 

Part 1.2 Chung Do Kwan 

Part 2: Song Mu Kwan 

Part 3 Kang Duk Won 

Part 4 Chang Mu Kwan 

Part 5 Mu Duk Kwan 

Part 6 Han Mu Kwan 

Part 6.1 Ji Do Kwan 

Part 6.2 Ji Do Kwan 

Part 7 Jung Do Kwan 

Part 8.1 Oh Do Kwan (the previous post). 

It is A LOT, and together as a whole body of work I hope I have provided the most thorough look at the Kwan-era philosophy with a focus on Kwan Creeds freely available in English online. At least that is what I set out to do when I started. I am in the process of reworking the material into a book, which depending on how fast I am working might even be out already (if not expect it within 6 months). Anyway, this time we are going to take a deep dive into the present day 5 Tenets of Taekwon-Do and the Student Oath. 

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 8: Jung Do Kwan

My sites URL says "JungDoKwan-Taekwondo", the reason is that I struggled to find a name for the blog and you had to make something up. So I figured I could honor my original teacher (Gm Cho Woon Sup) who is born in the year of the Dragon. Dragon in Korean is written either as yeong 용 (龍) which is the standard Korean word, some might even say the modern Korean spelling, the alternative is the same Hanja but the hangul would be ryeong 룡. My transcription skills very pretty poor at the time (the URL dates back to ca 2008ish and I wrote initially in Norwegian), but for a Norwegian "Jung" makes a lot of sense. I hope you forgive this diversion before we even start, but I wanted to start this post off by explaining that I am not affiliated with, nor do I have any connection with (except arguably through the Kukki Taekwondo as seen as a merger of all Kwan) the Jung Do Kwan that I am writing about here in this post. I am born in the year of the Ox which explains so much of my long nerding sessions. Slow but steady :-P 

In this post I want to introduce you to:

- The Jung Do Kwan

- The Founder of Jung Do Kwan

- The Jung Do Kwan Creed

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 7.2: Ji Do Kwan

 

This time I revisit the Ji Do Kwan because I want to make this blog series the most accurate and comprehensive series available for free in English on the old Kwan philosophies and creeds. I am sure someone else has made something better, but I can not find it, and if I would want to read something and it does not exist I feel I should do my best to make it. Most of this blog has come about this way, I want someone to write about something, I can not find much and so I do research and try my best to share what I find here :-) Anyway, in this post I will:

- Look at the Ji Do Kwan Members pledge

- Look at the Ji Do Kwan Crest

- Finish my theory and speculation on what Yeon Mu Kwan philosophy MIGHT have been and why I think so. 

So without further adu lets start :-)

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 7.1: Ji Do Kwan

 

I have been steadily giving out posts on the Kwan Heon or Kwan Creeds over the course of 2026. This time we have come to one of the Kwan I have a direct lineage back to through one of my original teachers Grandmaster Cho Woon Sup; The Ji Do Kwan. I will draw on both of his early books entitled Taekwondo 1 and Taekwondo 2, as well as a phamplet assembled by Grandmaster Al Cole and the 2015 historical collection phamplet I have been using as a base throughout the series. I will make sure to make it clear what I got where, and especially so if they are conflicting. 

Compared to Han Mu Kwan, the Ji Do Kwan is very well known and documented, and since this Kwan (and the Oh Do Kwan) is the school I have a very personal connection to I have been both looking forward to it and dreaded to start the post. 

I will as I have routinely said throughout the whole project, I am not fluent in Korean, nor am I a professional translator. Therefore any mistake here is mine and mine alone. And with that out of the way, let us look at Ji Do Kwan, their history and philosophy.

Balsaek - Bassai a peculiar movement discussion

There is a great upside to embracing your Kwan-roots fully, and that is the opening up in rich forms material and historical forms material that is no longer normally preserved in the mainstream Kukki-Taekwondo or modern ITF curricula. This post is not about proving one version right and another wrong. It is about tracing how one movement in Balsae/Bassai was described and performed across Japanese and Korean sources, and what that tells us about Kwan-era transmission.

One of the very oldest forms in the Oh Do Kwan repertoire is Balsaek Hyeong. It is also perhaps the oldest form I know and practice (along with Cheolgi / Tekki / Naihanchi and Ban Wol / Hangetsu / Seisan). 

"The Balsaek forms come in two versions, large and small. The distinctive feature of this form is that the blocking hand is quickly turned and transformed into another block, thereby shifting one from a disadvantageous position into an advantageous one. Its energy resembles the action of piercing through an enemy’s defensive fortifications, and from this comes the name “Balsaek.” - Choi Hong Hi 1959

It is a very interesting form, and among the forms that Anko Itosu drew from when he developed the Pyeongahn / Pinan / Heian Forms. We see the form echoed even into modern Taekwondo Poomsae. In Koryo Poomsae for instance you have right after a side kick, placing the foot down you do an upset low section spear hand thrust with one hand while the other one comes in front of the opposite shoulder in a long front stance. You then move the front foot back while pulling the "spearhand-thrusting-hand" back and up (to your hip in modern Koryo) while performing a low block. 

This short sequence originated quite possibly in Bassai Kata or Balsaek Hyeong, before being mined to be included in Pyeonghan 5. One of these two then served as inspiration or knowledge-well for the originator(s) of modern Koryo Poomsae when it comes to this short sequence. I am not claiming a direct documented borrowing here, only that the technical resemblance is suggestive when viewed against the background of the KTA forms committee.

Kwan Heon - A closer look at Kwan creeds of early Taekwondo part 6: Han Mu Kwan

This has proven to have been one of my most challenging series in what I can remember... But it is so worth it :-) Many many many years ago I started writing about the different schools of early taekwondo´s philosophies by looking at their kwan heon or school creeds. I abandoned the whole project for years, it was sitting in the "draft" folder of blogger.com. I then got the bright idea to start finishing stuff that I had started in 2025, and that served me well. I decided that the original concept of one long blogpost covering all of the Kwan was unfeasable, and so I divided the project up in smaller chunks and started with Chung Do Kwan in August  2025. Unfortunately I did manage to make a mistake in that one, so the whole project was sidelined until January 2026, and now we have covered Chung Do Kwan (part 1, and part 1.2), Song Mu Kwan (Part 2), Kang Duk Won (Part 3), Chang Mu Kwan (Part 4), Mu Duk Kwan (Part 6) and today we will be looking at possibly the most overlooked Kwan of them all; The Han Mu Kwan. 

Early Taekwondo was just Shotokan (it was and it wasn't)

One recurring comment I get over and over and over and over and over again when sharing something from the Kwan-era of Taekwondo or discussing anything technical about early Taekwondo are comments like: 

• "Because it was all just Shotokan"
• "All Kwan taught Shotokan"
• "They all taught Shotokan Kata"
• "FYI all early Taekwondo was just Shotokan"

One of the biggest problems with this is that it is a gross simplification of a very messy history. Its strength is that it does contain some truth, which is why I am not telling you outright that it is plain wrong, but it IS a simplification of history. A simplification that obscures technical discussions, evolution, understanding of the foundations of the modern Taekwondo systems and so on.

If you believe:

• The Ap Seogi (Short walking stance) is a new innovation that came with Taegeuk Poomsae.
• The Kukki Taekwondo blocking chambers are useless because they are not identical to modern Shotokan, and are based on Korean innovation.
• All Kwan were the same.

Then you have directly felt (unknowingly) the ramifications of the simplification of Taekwondo history. Does this make your yeopchagi (side kick) any weaker? No, but it does obscure greater understanding into the modern system seeing as there is a fundamental flaw in the understanding of the foundations. Now another thing that I recently pointed out; Projecting modern training experience in related systems backwards in time also gives us a whole host of problems. In that post I was hyper specific on one single technique. In this one I am going to talk very briefly about the different Kwan.

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.

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.

Seminar Report Bojeon Taekwondojang in Moss

I never actually got around to post this, but once upon a time, in what might be considered one of my highlights in my Taekwondo career; little old me was contacted by a Dojang at the other side of Norway and I (a nobody who happened to have a blog) was hired for a weekend seminar :-) It was one of the most fun and rewarding taekwondo weekends I have had :-) Covid and the lock down happened soon thereafter so I never pursued doing more seminars. In fact I wrote this back in 2020 after the seminar, but never posted it. I just found it going through my "drafts" in blogger to see if there is something I started on that I could finish (sometimes I go a little too big on things and do not get around to actually finish and post it. Anyway, if you want to know how a seminar focusing on practical poomsae applications with me might look, you can read on :-) Just remember I am still a student of Taekwondo so I am sure there would be things done differently if someone where to hire me today.