miguksaram

It sounded more psychotic than practical. You can always go to Century marital arts for some wooden or traditional kamas.

I actually liked that one. And yet you continue to expose all of yours? Please point out any of my "made up" points. These are points taken from the history books not pulles out of my anus. I never said buddhist monks died out. However, please point out in Korean history where the monks were called out to fight in the wars? You are mixing Chinese history with Korean history. That or you are watching way too many Super Samurai Sunday movies. However, if you can point out from acutal Korean history where they called upon the Korean Buddhist monks to fight in their wars, I will concede this point. However, if your really want to nit pick then answer me this, where did the buddhist monks of Korea originate from? Answer....they were taught by the Chinese monks. Never did I say only soldiers knew martial arts. What I did say was they were taught by Chinese government. The common people may have known how to fight but they were not in any way shape or form an organized militia. They did not have any thing placed together in an organized matter to train fighters in systematic way. Would you say a street gang member who fights is a martial artist? How about a neighborhood kid who just throws punches wildly in the air when he/she fights. Is that martial arts? Taekkyon is a bad example to use as it was never seen as a martial art until its recent rediscovery. Taekkyon was a folk/gambling game in which two contestants would try to knock each other down using sweeps, kicks and throws. It was something that even most commoners looked down to only drunken thugs would play. Now that it has be rediscovered, many Koreans are quick to say that it is a martial art, because it is theclosest thing they have to an indengenous martial art. So far no evidence that you have shown me comes close to saying that KSW is such an art, or any KMA for that matter. First of all, I never said I believed him, I merely pointed out that your own GM says that his training happened as he traveled to Far East Asia. Secondly, are you telling me that your definition of Far East Asia is Korean Buddhist Temples? You need to get a map and look around Far East Asia extends past the temple of buddha in Korea. Third, not every freaking Buddhist temple practices Sun Mu Do. Actually, barely a handful of them do. Wait actually may be one or two of them do. By the way, Sun Mu Do is a Korean version of Chinese Kung fu as it was handed down by your warrior monks. Perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough when I would travel back and forth from here and Korea. Perhaps my wife and her family just didn't visit the right temples when they would go pray. Keep in mind that his visitation and stay at the temples were not for his martial arts but for his spiritual practice. Some of the Korean KSW leaders have been known to do this. No that is not impossible, I never said it was impossible. You seem to be jumping from this debate. First of all you stated that KSW is neither Japanese or Chinese but a Korean art. I have since provided you evidence to the contrary. Now you tend to put word in my mouth, or in this case letters in my postings about what I believe and don't believe. You have said that I am making up points and that most of rantings are that of a people who believe that all Korean arts come from the Japanese. Again my rantings are based on facts that are readily available if you dig deep enough to find them. Then they are not Indigenous...BTW...let's look at that word...Indigenous- Originating and living or occurring naturally in an area or environment or having originated in and being produced, growing, or living naturally in a particular region or environment (note: Definitions taken from Dictionary.com) If these arts were influenced by outside factors they are not indigenous. I can teach a monkey how to punch and kick. I am not saying Koreans have never fought in their lives prior to exchanging ideas with Chinese. What I am saying is that they did not put together organized systems of fighting, until later in the 16th or 17th century. Even then that was a manual used by military not by commoners. See there you go again. First of all I never said I was well versed in Far East History. I told you that I studied Korean history, more to the point I researched Korean history and how it could verify or detract from claims of the KMA community. Secondly you should read up on the migration of the mongolians. You would see that they went through China prior to settling in Korea. So yes I would have to say a vast majority was one sided at this point. Yes...yes...and be careful because with this line of logic you may scoff at my notion that the world is not flat. BTW...please honor me with your credentials in this matter. Also, I hope you don't think I am saying that KSW is worthless art. Far from it. I find it to be a great martial art. I have studied with some fine practitioners of is such as GM Rudy Timmerman and GM Yu as well as GM Park. Sorry it took me so long to write back. It was hard see the messages. I seem to be going blind for some reason.

Ummm...I would recommend getting your brother therapy for Christmas. Seems he needs that more than kamas.

Hold up for a second I need to go drink some water. It has been a while since I have been in a peeing contest............ok ready. Opinoins that are based in facts. Let's look at Korean history in general. We'll pick it up from the Shilla Kingdom since that was the equivalent of King Arthor's court for Korea. It was well known that Shilla made a truce with the T'ang kingdom of China and received much of its military training from the Chinese not to mention their aid in the war with the Paekchae and the Koruryo. This is the THEM I am talking about. The Chinese governement was driving force in teaching the Korean soldiers. They did not have any traveling monks teaching secret martial art moves. That was just not how it was. Sorry. There was a very basic class state of mind, Farmers, Merchants, Military, Government oh wait, hookers and slaves as well. These were teh families that you were born into. You didn't have many families with their marital art prowess, again if they did, most likely it was heavily Chinese influenced. You also had the gangsters or thugs who could fight, but it wouldn't really be considered a martial art system so much as just a bunch of guys who could street fight. Now we will fast forward a bit past the Shilla kingdom to the Koryo kingdom (hurry up and flip the pages of your Korean history book forward....don't worry, I'll wait for you to catuch up....ok...there now? Good let's continue) OK..now this is a very significant time for the Koreans and KMA. Why well first of all there was a shift in leadership and with came a shift in policy. However, the first significant hit was the palace burning of 1126, where all of the palace buildings, including tens of thousands of books in the royal library and national academy were burned to the ground. This was a major set back as much of Korea's written history could be found there. It wasn't like you could go to the local library back then. Also, many of the military manuals were also destroyed which would have had most "documented" works. So as we can see that was a major set back. Now let's take in account that the national religion shifted from Buddhism to Confucianism. Now Confucianism strived for perfection of the mind. So to cut to the chase, things such as fighting or practice of martial arts was looked down upon as something only thugs would do. Korea's mentality shifted to more scholary pursuits. This was a good beginning to the dismantling of most indenginous martial arts (which, by the way, there is STILL no documented proof that any them ever existed.) Ok now we are going to take a GIANT leap forward to the annexation of Korea by the Japanese. First of all martial arts was not outlawed. However, anything dealing with Korean culture was. Japanese didn't want to kill of the Korean people, they wanted to destroy their culture. They did this by destroying books, making them learn Japanese language and culture. Yes, there were karate and judo schools around and yes, Koreans were allowed (though mostly the richer Koreans were the ones that practiced). No there were no kung fu schools. I never did say that there were. Now your GM first received his training from his grandfather. His grandfather was part of the military. This would account for the Chinese flavor that you see in KSW...why? (Please refer to my beginning post about the Chinese government helping in the training of the Korean armies) You may also go on to find out if you, REALLY look into your own history past whatever GM tells you, that he studied under GM Ji and GM Choi in HKD. HELLO This is from his own website. He traveled throughout the FAR EAST....ummm...I believe that might include China. He developed his art from other arts he studied. This was not something that came from arts indengenous from Korea. And I'm surprised that you don't know more about your own art at your own rank. Do yourself a favor. Go beyond the history that is spoon fed to you and learn for yourself. BTW...I am not some Japanese Karate loving propoganda spewing Korean martial art hater. I have had 24 years in the arts, 20 which have been focused in the Korean arts in which I studied up on their histories as well as actual Korean history. Now if you'll excuse me I must shake, and put it back in and zip up my pants. My side of the contest is done.....for now.

Are you looking for traditional or sport kamas?

Hwarang warriors did exist, but they art of Hwarangdo is not as ancient. Their Hwarang practiced military arts as taught by the Chinese. I see you do KSW. You should go look at a Chinese mantis school some day and you will see a lot of similarities to your system. Considering KSW is a mixture of HKD and "family" art, I hate to break this to you, but your stuff is derived from both Chinese and Japanese arts. No it was not a long lost art only taught from father to son, or something reserved strictly for the "royal" families to learn. No one says that Korean didn't have any indegenous arts. However, due to occupation, philosophical and political changes. Most of those art would have died out. Plus, considering they had most of their training from the Chinese government, many of those arts would have had Chinese influences.

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, however, we just held such an event two weeks ago at the AKA Grand Nationals. We had black belt /advance rank wushu divsions. Everything ran smoothly. We did not have a extremely huge turn out for the wushu specific events, but I feel that is mostly due to not promoting it very well. That is why I was trying to get feed back from the wushu people on what we could do to make it appealing for them to enter such a tournament in the future. With respect, Jeremy

I assume you are going for the Captain Obvious award this year. ha.ha.ha.ha.ha.. I agree with what you said, outside of the homeless street gangs practicing Taekkyon. It was practiced in more of the lower class citizens, but not zero'd in on the homeless gangs, though popularized mostly by the gangs, which lead to its slow demise.

I agree. I know it is not an easy task. I will be starting one based on those who attended our AKA Grands this year. I am trying to seek out sponsors for the tournament next year and this is a crucial part of getting that done. I was hoping to take the studies that I produce and compare them to other studies out there and see how they compare and contrast.

I don't feel it will be difficult. Keep in mind that if you enter the wushu division you will have to do a wushu form. You can not go in there with a karate form. Plus we will have wushu people judging the division, so we won't have complaints about karate people not knowing what they are doing in that division.

Most of what I found on Google, dealt in general sports and most of the reports have a starting cost of about $200.00 USD. Unfortunately that doesn't garuntee me the informaiton I am seeking.

Sanchin, when done properly, is a very hard form. One that many non-goju/shorei/shuri stylist will understand. It is also one of the very few katas that it is best to perform without a gi top on so that the judges can see the tension through out the body. I saw it done way back when but I have not seen it in any recent competitions. As for your coach coming in, I would not do it for the fact they would still not understand its purpose. Good luck to you.

For those who participate in wushu tournaments, would you like to see wushu divsions added to sport karate tournaments? If so would you be more willing to support tournaments which held wushu divsions?

I know your instructor, Sensei Tankson. One heck of a fighter. I had the priviledge of judging his division at the tournament. I thought it was interesting to see Jason having to fight against his dad's team in the team fighting. (which I will post the results on sometime today)

Does anyone know where I can find demographics on martial arts, such as average age of participants, average household income, typical profiles of a participant (white, black, chinese....), etc? Thanks.

This was one of the most anticipated events in sport martial arts this year, where the old collides with the new. The American Karate Association’s Grand Nationals, the oldest sport karate tournament in America, and the World Sport Karate Federation’s World Finals, the newest circuit today, collided together in Chicago, Illinois for one of the most spectacular array of sport martial arts competition. Hosted by promoter John Sharkey, one of the most well known and well respected, promoters in the sport today, and held at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare, this two-day event saw some of the top competitors from all over North America and Europe. Great teams such Twism, Pro Rank, Straight Up, J. Phillips, Paul Mitchell, K.I.C.K. Team, EKS, Sidekick, Revolution, IDC, AKA, Golden State, Midwest Force, NWK, Five Knuckle Bullet, TAC, Victory, Sun City and many more punched, kicked and tricked their way for world titles as well as the covenant Warrior’s Cup, one of the most prestigious awards given out in sport karate to date. Kicking it off for Friday Friday night was set for continuous and team sparring as well as the weapons competition for extreme, creative and traditional weapons. Many weapons from Chinese broadsword to the bo to the popular katana were displayed in top fashion. Some of the highlights of the evening, Caitlin Dechelle who has been tearing up the NASKA circuit all year, but unseeded in the WSKF circuit. As a result she had to perform six times on Friday night that netted her wins in the 12-14 traditional weapons, 12-13 girls creative weapons and the 12-14 girls extreme weapons. Another great highlight, in the weapons’ division, was Jarret Leiker who took home the 15-17 traditional weapons and the 16-17 boys creative weapons. Sparring was brutal for the juniors as Donald Mills and Venya Bruk pounded on each other for the title. Bruk continued through the match with nose bleeding, but in the end lost to Mills. For the team sparring, the two number one seeded boys’ teams had an upset. Team IDC’s Luke Chesney, Andrew Ford and Anthony Difilippo and Thee Team’s Brandon Yocum, Ty Hinds and Brandon Allen were taken out by top fighters from Team Twism (Frankie Fernandez, Jake Lysgaard and Donald Vickers) and Team EES (Dylan Smith, Casey Williamson and Ryan Freeman). In the end it was Team Twism versus Team EES for the title. After three exciting rounds of some excellent sparring Team EEA reigned victorious over Team Twism. Many eyes of the evening were focused on the 3 men 1 woman team sparring. The Friday night round of eliminations would determine who would go on to fight for the $4,000.00, winner take all prize. When the smoke cleared and the brawls were halted, Team Tankson Elite and Team Straight Up Gold were the two remaining teams who would advance to the final rounds against the seeded teams of Team Straight Up Purple and Team IDC. Perhaps the most crowd pleasing finale was the impromptu tricks battle against Team AKA’s Craig Henningsen and Team IDC’s Daniel Pitlock while waiting for the judges decision on who would win the run off for the Youth’s Weapon’s Warrior Cup. While waiting for the final decision, Henningsen decided to throw is trade marked webster. Always looking for a challenge, Pitlock decided to throw a tick of his own. This lead to an exciting tricks battle where both participants were throwing an array of moves from a standing position. This brought a very tired crowd to its feet cheering and applauding while the judges laughed and enjoyed the show. In the end, Henningsen won the run offs, but the crowds were the big winners as they watched a great performance by two top competitors. To be continued…

Yes, most likely the instructors were informed of this from their Korean masters to make TKD sound more cool. Taekkyon is a Korean folk game where two contestants try to unbalance the other through a series of kicks and throws. If find it hard to believe that Gen Choi and many of the other Kwan leaders studied this art when it was thought dead for many many years, until they found one man named Song Duk-Ki(1893∼1987) who knew of the art. So you mean to tell me that all they had to do was just ask the kwan leaders and they could have pointed out many of the different teachers of this art? Hmmmmm..... The naming of the art is a history lesson in itself, but it was not named after Taekkyon.

This is not true for all martial arts. For instance Aikido and Hapkido are branches of the Daito-ryu Akijitsu. Which is a hybrid of different Jujitsu arts from Takeda O'Sensei. It is common belief that Shaolin is the birthplace of ALL martial arts, this is simply not true. While it did spawn many of the arts, not every art has Shaolin roots. BTW...Wushu is relatively new I believe you were wanting to reference the origins of these arts to Shaolin Kung Fu not Wushu. Anyway, there are many other arts that are Asian in nature but do not have any roots to Shaolin. I find it very amusing that people think that the Chinese had no form of combative system until a monk came around and showed them. The forms that were created by Itosu, were just that, CREATED by Itosu. His techniques may have been derived from Chuan'fa, but the forms are his. If you look at the many forms of Chinese kung fu, you will not see many resembling that of Itosu's.

Part of being a 'master' is knowing when not to put your foot in your mouth. Recognizing that fact, I chose to comment on only the things which I could talk about intelligently, namely that in my experience I noticed that progression from 10th Gup to Cho Dan happens faster in most TKD than TSD, and that most of the TKD I've been exposed to has much less emphasis on hand techniques than TSD. My biggest gripe was the fact that people trying to answer the question took it to a level of my art is better than yours. This last post you made was great. It informed more about the TSD and, as a practitioner of both arts, help me see more of how the arts evolved seperately. Thank you. I am part of that list as well. If ever you want some great information on WTF TKD. That is definetly the list to be on.

Any TKD schools that practice original hyungs are not practicing TKD, they are practicing the kwan system (Ie Chungdokwan, Jidokwan, Ohdokwan, etc) Also, I should mention that when refering to TKD I should be more specific and say WTF TKD or KKW TKD. I am not comparing to ITF TKD due to the fact that ITF TKD still holds to its tradtional karate roots. So with that said, if the TKD school is not teaching Taeguks as their patterns then they are not practicing what is now considered WTF TKD or modern TKD. There is really no such thing as "Traditional" TKD. That would simply be Korean karate or original kwan system. Truth of the matter is that it wasn't the government, but the kwan leaders themselves who wanted to organize their arts under one unified association. This started shortly after the Korean war and continued through the 1950's, with many problems. It wasn't until 1959 that they lobbied the government for help in the formation of the KTA. Agreed. WTF TKD has since branched off and developed its own uniqueness of a martial art. Why sad? This is a good thing. Do you know why TKD is so popular? Simply because it is well known through its sports affiliation with Olympics. This is not a bad thing. The bad thing is when you get chump instructors who * the art. If you have good TSD instructors who also do sport then this is good. It gets the art in the main stream and that in return helps in further development of the art itself. There has to be a balance naturally...too much sport or too much "tradition" will inevitably kill an art. Well I agree with you that it depends on the instructor simply because neither of two arts had that in the original curriculum. It is definetly something that is brought in from an outside source. But there are specific differences if both arts are taught on a "traditional" basis. TSD does not have a walking stance. TKD chambers lower for punches. TSD sidekick is more "Okinawan" with its chambering. The way the execute blocks and philosophy behind techniques are different. I totally agree with you here as far as A is better than B. That is why I posted my comments. The original question was what was the difference. However, the answers received were, more along the lines of I don't like this or that of A or B is not as good because of this. Who cares? That is not what the person asked. Unfortunately it is human nature to spot the differences in two items instead of looking for the same qualities. Ahmen brother.

Ok..maybe I missed something in both of the "masters'" posts, but I yet to hear either one of them explain the difference between TKD and TSD. First of all TSD predates TKD. It was one of the few kwans that split during the formation of TKD. TSD, still follows, for better use of a term, Korean karate. They still practice the same forms that they did when Hwan Kee first conceived the kwan. TKD, though born from karate has evolved into its own seperate art. Where the emphasis of TKD is in it's kicking techniques, TSD tends to emphasize a good balance of both hand and leg techniques. TSD is a bit more circular in its motions, due to its chuan'fa influence, as oppose to TKD's more linear movements.

Yes you do have a long drive....geez.

BTW Jinxx, which burbs? I am from the Aurora area.

Original TSD= SBD. There is no difference. Hwang Kee originally called it Tang Soo Do because that is what he was studying under Lee Won-kuk at one time. However, he changed the name.

From what I understand that they look good as team but it is their individual stuff that has been slipping. However, at US Open they didn't look that good as they usually do.