"Korean Karate"

***DerAuslander*** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 9:50am

General Choi may not have even coined the word Taegwondo.

None of the Gwan founders ever studied Taegyeon.

**DSL** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 10:10am

True there, GM Sun claims he slipped it on a piece of paper to Choi.

Btw, if anyone hasn't noticed, TKD 'history' is insane, finding the actual truth is nearly impossible with all of the different agendas and personalities involved.

**tkd panda** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 10:44am

Originally Posted by Errant108

General Choi may not have even coined the word Taegwondo.

None of the Gwan founders ever studied Taegyeon.

I always thought this was the one thing taekwon-do practitioners regardless of affiliation could agree on.

I even have friends with a background in WTF who know/think choi came up with the name.

**Fodland** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 10:45am

Originally Posted by KO'd N DOA

So General Choi invented the WORD taekwondo, and he forced everyone to learn the amalgamated system, the leaders of the individual kwans had more to do with it and many rebelled and continue to do there own thing.

He didn't force any of them, TKD was made by all of the kwan leaders, meaning they had to agree to the name.

They agreed because:
1: The president ordered them to make a korean martial art. And I think that taekkyon was popular before WWII. So in order to fool people into thinking that they're not making a new korean system to replace the old ones, they chose a name that sounded like taekkyon, making people think TKD is an evolved form of taekkyon because of the name likenessess.
2: They thought Taekwondo, the foot fist way, was a good description of the art

Originally Posted by KO'd N DOA

And both branches think TKD will unit the Koreas!

I think it's sad that people think like that, and I know people who do... Sure, the unification of ITF and WTF might make North & South less hostile to eachother, but still....
I'm not sure, but wasn't ITF HQ originally in North, and WTF in south?

Originally Posted by KO'd N DOA

Next time I will place your caveat in my post, to make sure the next person does not fall prey to propaganda.

Thank you.

No problem, but don't hope for too much. ITF nutriders cling onto the belief that Choi is some kinda God so hard that ITF should become a religion.....

Originally Posted by DSL

Btw, if anyone hasn't noticed, TKD 'history' is insane, finding the actual truth is nearly impossible with all of the different agendas and personalities involved.

Tell me about it.... I was stupid enough to have a school project about TKD with emphasis on Choi's claim of creating TKD( it was interesting, but too much work....), and it was DARN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to find good sources. And some websites even argued which town Choi was born in............

Choi claims to have been taught taekkyon by his calligraphy teacher, when he was 14.... Too bad for Choi that his teacher, who was a "master of taekkyon", was unheard of in taekkyon circles. Yes, the masters had to go into hiding, but you can't be a master without being accepted as one by another.

Originally Posted by Errant108

General Choi may not have even coined the word Taegwondo.

None of the Gwan founders ever studied Taegyeon.

Why do you always say "g" instead of "k"? Is the english translated pronounciation incorrect or something?

***DerAuslander*** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 11:06am

I use the Seoul Standard system of Romaja.

**Matt W.** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 1:09pm

...And, he's pretentious.

Anyway, at best Choi can be called the founder of "Taekwon-do" which is the particular way of writing (in Roman characters) the art practiced in the ITF and it's offshoots. But he had nothing to do with the other forms of Taekwondo practiced around the world. The art practiced in the ITF and it's offshoots and the art practiced in the WTF and it's offshoots are essentially different arts with the same ancestry, which is mostly shotokan karate.

Although Choi was, apparently, instrumental in helping to spread TKD around the world. So, at least some of the TKD that is now part of the WTF was initially started by Choi. All of which is to say that there is also a lot of crossover between the histories of the two styles.

**DSL** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 4:21pm

On Taekwondo vs Taegwondo, the K (gi-ok) character is pronounced more as a K when in the first character (initial character that is), if it's secondary then it's a harder G sound... kind of like K with a guh. Hard to explain, but the enunciation of some of the Hangul characters varies based on position in Korean words (Si-ot becomes 'shee' sound next to the i etc).

The 'Taeg' is closer to how it sounds, but the Taek is how it's accepted in English speaking countries.

**Vieux Normand** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 7:17pm

Japanese does the same thing with its consonants: softening them if they're in mid-term, even if the same consonant would be hard at the beginning of a word.

The fact that the same is done in Hangul explains the matter of transliteration of "Taeguk" versus "Taekook". Saw those forms in a book the other day. Damn, but I wish the ones I had to learn, way back when, had been that easy...

**retrograde** · Posted On: 5/21/2008 7:48pm

Originally Posted by DSL

Btw, if anyone hasn't noticed, TKD 'history' is insane, finding the actual truth is nearly impossible with all of the different agendas and personalities involved.

Difficult, but not impossible. It is, like most study in the historical field, a matter of sorting the credible, correctly executed research from the rest of the muck. Admittedly, in the case of taekwondo, there's a lot of muck. The South Korean government played a role in spreading misinformation, which is a powerful force to contend with.

Plenty of older Korean guys who trained in the original kwans are still alive and teaching, though. Some may be reluctant to discuss Japanese influence, or talk about General Choi if they're from the WTF, but in my experience, most are quite happy to reminisce for a while.