2005 Hanmadang - anyone going?

[Kill Jill]

Aefbird - I'm so glad you see what I mean.

I don't want to slur any culture or nation, but I also can't quite fathom the 'competitive' attitude of Korean Taekwondo participants.

Perhaps the ONLY Korean representatives I've seen that defy this laissez faire attitude are The Korean Tigers demonstration team. If ever you see them, please recognize their genuine respect and dedication to the sport. The reason for it? The Tigers' coach makes sure he instills the 'do' part of Taekwondo in his students from the word go. This is certainly not the case with 90% of other Korean instructors.

It's a strange state of affairs. But, I reckon this will lead to an increased medal tally from non-Koreans, finally forcing the Koreans to re-think and up their game.

I'll try to put up some more pix on Photo Album board now that you remind me!

[isshinryu5toforever]

I am not widely involved in the TKD world, at least not as much as many of the people here. I only participate on a college team. I have seen Koreans in competition a few times however, and from what I have seen there has been a decline in recent years. The last competitor I saw was a 3rd dan exchange student from Korea. She seemed uninterested in the competition, got a little annoyed at the end of her match, and was just plain unenthusiastic. She only fought one match as an exhibition. She won by showing flashes of her potential when she fell behind. She landed a well-timed back kick near the end that put her up by 1. I tend to wonder if the reason for this is she felt the competition was beneath her. The shows and demonstrations they put on aren't real competitions for them. So, they look half-hearted in their attempts. They really get into it when the worlds come along and they're going through trials, making the team, and participating on a world scale. I'm not saying this is good, in fact it's pretty sad. You're right though, eventually the Koreans will start losing more matches, and they will go back to hardcore discipline.

[Kill Jill]

Well, it may be no wonder that certain standards are going down...

...This past week in my Hapkido class has been the lowest point I've so far experienced regards lack of discipline in a gym setting. There are so many instances of real clowning around on behalf of the kids in the gym. The moment I found most disturbing this week was when the kids kept running in and out of the cloakroom during the lesson to 'secretly' get some candies from a coat pocket. They came out, distributed the candies to their buddies, then 'discretely' threw the candy wrappers and chewed gum onto the mats during instruction. One kid was even blatantly bashing a candy on a window ledge with a nunchaku, cracking the window in the process! It was so evident what was going on, but the instructor did or said NOTHING about this, except at the end, when he asked a senior student to go and get a broom.

In fact, on one day last week, I decided to just put on my shoes and go home mid-way through the lesson because the behaviour was so nuts. I know you'll all tell me it's time to find another gym, but I'll continue to go there until the summer for my own personal reasons. I just want to tell you about the state of things in a lot of gyms here. It's really surprising. (Although, it's not really surprising me anymore - I kind of expect it by now!)