Sit Down and Listen (KMA Forum Guidelines)

[Sam Browning]

I hereby pronounce this thread to be infected with Asian fever!

[DerAuslander]

Hmmm... are we trying to imply something about Japan? :P

How about you just come out and say what you want.

[TEA]

Uh, KMA history: They learned some Shotokan and Aikijutsu and called it Korean when they got rid of the Japanese (Japs is SO un-pc) after WW2?

Not quite. You left out the influence of Shito-Ryu and Shudokan Karate, and Quanfa on TKD. The Akikujutsu roots of Hapkido are debatable, largely because the Daito-Ryu crowd disputes them (there's a twist for you, a JMA claiming that the KMA is not a copy). You also left out the influence of Kendo and Judo.

To what extent, if any, Taekyon had any influence on TKD other than as something to try and emulate/recreate would make a very interesting research project - one that I would like to take on some day if I'm able. While authors like Capenar, Dorhenweld, and Eric Madis tend to discount any Taekyon influence other than as a political-progaganda tool used by the TKD revisionist historians in the '70s, who tried to cover up the Karate roots of TKD, I think that it at least played an inspirational role in terms of the heavy emphasis on kicks in TKD.

I also think that they may have overlooked the possible influence Taekyon may have had on TKD via any senior students of the Kwan founders who may have had previous Taekyon background. I think it might be interesting to see how many (if any) of the first generation students of the Kwan founders claim to have studied some Taekyon prior to studying Tang Soo Do/Kong Soo Do. Of course, verifying these claims would be as impossible as verifying the claims of Hwang-ki that he learned Taekyon from a kknangp'ae in Seoul as a kid would be pretty much impossible, since Taekyon was not a formal martial art per-se, but more of a game kids and some adults played and learned from each other through the course of play (much like hack sack is today).

From what I've read, most of the kicks in TKD (e.g. roundhouse, crescent, axe, back, spin, and hook) did not exist in Karate prior to the end of WWII, which begs the question "where did these kicks come from?" Seems like CMA would be the obvious choice, but Taekyon could be a darkhorse candidate for some of them, at least in TKD. I started a thread on a similar vein in E-Budo a while back, asking abou the origins of these kicks in Karate, since they were not present pre-WWII and are still restricted more to Japanese Karate than to Okinawan styles. The consensus was that CMA in origin and no-one wanted to accept even the remote possibility that there could have been some influence from the Koreans via the continued close contact between many of the Kwans and their Japanese schools of origin up until the late '60s.

Anyways, thanks Der for inviting me to come play.

[oldman34]

I like this forum already.

[DerAuslander]

Taekyon was not a formal martial art per-se, but more of a game kids and some adults played and learned from each other through the course of play (much like hack sack is today).

I wasn't aware you were allowed to step on people's faces in hacky sack.

I wouldn't call Taegyon a game.

Sport is the term I would use. Sport in the same sense boxing is a sport.

[Miguksaram]

I wasn't aware you were allowed to step on people's faces in hacky sack.

I wouldn't call Taegyon a game.

Sport is the term I would use. Sport in the same sense boxing is a sport.

Taekkyon was a fighting system, that, due to social change of religion, was basicly maintained as a game . The game was first most popular during village festivals where one village would compete against another. Slowly it "evolved" into more of a gambling game which mostly gangpae would participate in. This dwindled its popularity even more as society hung the tag of "thug" on you if you knew it or participated in it.

[TEA]

I wasn't aware you were allowed to step on people's faces in hacky sack.

You're not? No wonder no one wants to play hacky sack with me any more. :cry:

Taekkyon was a fighting system, that, due to social change of religion, was basicly maintained as a game . The game was first most popular during village festivals where one village would compete against another. Slowly it "evolved" into more of a gambling game which mostly gangpae would participate in. This dwindled its popularity even more as society hung the tag of "thug" on you if you knew it or participated in it.

That pretty much is what I've read.

I've also heard from a pre-war tae kyon practitioner, that the country folk spent part of the workout time learning to throw rocks, and became rather deadly at it.

From what I've read, the rock throwing was a seperate game that would be played between either two teams from the same village or more commonly between teams from two seperate villages. I'll have to dig around a little bit, but I think villages would sometimes settle disputes with these "games" of rock throwing and that occasionally deaths did happen. In the late Choson Period, King Kojong viewed one of these games and was so horrified that he banned them.

Emboesso, if you know an old Taekyon practitioner and you are still in contact with him, would you mind asking him a few questions for me regarding Taekyon during the Colonial Period?

[UpaLumpa]

That somewhat jives with what I've read, that taekyon is very analagous to capoeria. A former forum member, Wastrel, spent a lot of time in Korea and was emphatic in stating that the kicks were not similar to TKD.

[TEA]

Here's a few videos of Taekyon. Judge for yourself, but I think I can see some influence on TKD when comparing TKD with Karate (Shotokan, Shito-ryu, Shudokan), especially in terms of more circular movements and spinning and jumping techniques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3nmjKvOADo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp-sjF8bGY0

[kwoww]

I'm trying not to be a nutrider here, but Choi Hong Hi claims that a number of TKD techniques were inspired by Taekyon techniques, but updated to be more effective and logical.
Either way, it looks to me like the influence was more conceptual. In other words, the techniques themselves look very un-similar, whereas it looks like the idea of the jumping spinning roundhouse kick is very much a Taekyon-inspired thing.

Another thing I noticed that was similar to TKD was the fact that the movements were mostly very soft and suddenly "exploded," and weren't just 100% hard all the time.