Tae Kyon's kicking influence

[SageGhost]

From what I saw, TKD the way our organization does it is definitely taekkyun influenced.

Or modern Tae Kyon is influenced by popular TKD?

I am going with you on this one. The Taekkyon people even deny the link between the two styles. Combining Taekkyon with Taekwondo though, that would do wonders for your kicking game, I suppose.

[bushido_man96]

I don't believe that the Taek Yon done today is the same Taek Yon that is claimed to have existed centuries ago. I don't believe that it survived underground that long. The Taek Yon that we see today I believe is influenced by the same techniques that influenced TKD from Karate.

[SageGhost]

I don't believe that the Taek Yon done today is the same Taek Yon that is claimed to have existed centuries ago. I don't believe that it survived underground that long. The Taek Yon that we see today I believe is influenced by the same techniques that influenced TKD from Karate.

You are right, it is not the same Taekkyon. There is traditional Taekkyon, which is the old, authentic version, and you have modern Taekkyon revival, which is the modern TKD-influenced version. It can be pretty confusing and it is often the very source of the claim that TKD came from Taekkyon. TKD kicks are designed to destroy while Taekkyon's kicks were designed to unbalance. I am thinking that adding Taekkyon kicks to one's TKD arsenal would make their kicking more versatile as you would have the power/destructive kicks of TKD mixed with the flowing/unbalancing kicks of Taekkyon. I don't know how compatible they would be though - the whole "rhythm" of Taekkyon doesn't seem to mix very well with the more hyper "rhythm" of TKD. I could be wrong, though.

[bushido_man96]

I think that TKD already has the kicks that Tae Kyon is using now. What's different is the how they are applied. The revival Tae Kyon is a bit more flashy, and tends to have a Capoeria roda flavor to it.

[tonydee]

I've also come across a few interviews where Choi Hong Hi admitted he didn't learn physical techniques of taekyon from his calligraphy teacher... at best his imagination was stirred by stories of the art, and perhaps he did try to make up for a bit in later years, changing the ITF TKD techniques in odd ways to distance it from karate, until that sine wave stuff was born.

I also agree that it's very likely modern tae kyon is heavily influenced by taekwondo. I've observed the same with hapkido - the kicks are a superset of taekwondo's, and where they overlap the techniques are the same. With taekwondo being compulsorily taught to school kids in South Korea, what chance has any other art got of removing the kicking habits they form? If they try, they probably won't have many students... habits are hard to break, and most people want to be able to cross train simultaneously in taekwondo, hapkido and whatever else they're doing while having the various influences more or less accepted.

[JusticeZero]

Well, I know that the kicking dynamics themself are distinctly Asian, Korean. Capoeira uses a very different structure; in the end they both work, but they go in radically different directions. The body mechanics feed into that.

The fact that they step isn't that unusual. It isn't THAT much of a peculiarity for an art to prohibit static standing in one dead position and to offer as an alternative a loop of transitions - I believe drunken kung fu does this as well. The footwork is not at all similar to Capoeira, nor are their goals and focus.

As noted earlier in a different post, I had been dragged into a controversy regarding two different and competing styles of Tae Kyon, and as such had had to look at various youtube clips and the like; all the above applies to both, and they do look significantly different from each other in structure. If I had to theorize, i'd say that they were coming from different regional variants.

In the end, you can carve a martial art down to quite a small amount of curriculum and have it survive; the seed to an art is actually quite small, and once people fully grasp the seed, they can rebuild most of the rest of it by conforming with the dynamics. It sounded as though there were about two such seeds in play that were being reconstructed.

[Vagabund]

Well, I know that the kicking dynamics themself are distinctly Asian, Korean. Capoeira uses a very different structure; in the end they both work, but they go in radically different directions. The body mechanics feed into that.

The fact that they step isn't that unusual. It isn't THAT much of a peculiarity for an art to prohibit static standing in one dead position and to offer as an alternative a loop of transitions - I believe drunken kung fu does this as well. The footwork is not at all similar to Capoeira, nor are their goals and focus.

As noted earlier in a different post, I had been dragged into a controversy regarding two different and competing styles of Tae Kyon, and as such had had to look at various youtube clips and the like; all the above applies to both, and they do look significantly different from each other in structure. If I had to theorize, i'd say that they were coming from different regional variants.

In the end, you can carve a martial art down to quite a small amount of curriculum and have it survive; the seed to an art is actually quite small, and once people fully grasp the seed, they can rebuild most of the rest of it by conforming with the dynamics. It sounded as though there were about two such seeds in play that were being reconstructed.

You are right, there were two "seeds" in the renaissance period of Taekkyon who influenced the present stlyes:

1.) Song Deok-gi (also trancribed as "Dukki" etc.)

Born in 1893, he learnt Taekkyon in his youth, until the Japanese prohibited it indirectly. There is an interview with him about this indirect prohibition. You can find it at

http://taekkyon.de/html/en/download.html

(song_interview_translation_EN_DE.pdf)

Song was not the only master after 1945 who knew Taekkyon, but one can say that he was the only one who passed it down. There was no need to "reconstruct" Taekkyon because of him. He died in 1987 and taught Taekkyon from 1971 to Shin Han-seung, Do Ki-hyun, Lee Yong-bok, Jeon Gyeong-hwa and many others.

2.) Shin Han-seung

Born in 1928, Taekkyon had already more or less disappeard when he grew up. He learnt Taekkyon mostly from Song. However, he added some techniques and had his own philosophy. There was actually no philosophy at all before Shin.

I like to compare this history with the Capoeira history, because Shin played a similar role as mestre Bimba, I think.

Nowadays, there are three Taekkyon styles:

1st) Kyulyun Taekkyon Association: This stlye is not influenced by Shin. At least not more than a tiny little bit, if at all. Do Ki-hyun is the leader of the style.

2nd) Korea Taekkyon Association (or Federation): This one is a mixture of Shin, Song and Lee Yong-bok (who learnt from both masters). Maybe comparalble to the "Contemporânea" stlye of Capoeira.

3rd) Korea Traditional Taekkyon Association: They follow Shin's stlye pretty exactly.

However, all three stlyes have a lot in common. They also do competitions together. Competition (kyorugi) was one of, if not THE, most important things about traditional Taekkyon. It was mentioned in earlier posts that Taekkyon was a game. It was not only a game, but this side was definately crucial.

As a consequence, the aim in kyorugi of all three styles is still the same: Hit the other's face with a kick or take him down.

We had the first European Taekkyon Meeting this month and members of all three stlyes attended. It was no problem to train and compete together.

I did Taekwondo before I switched to Taekkyon. As far as I can see, Taekkyon masters are careful not to mix Taekkyon with other influences. So I would claim there is no TKD influcence in Taekkyon. I too tried to eliminate all my TKD techniques and motions. It took a while, as I can see from videos I made about myself, but I can say that today my motion does not tell that I once did TKD.

Is there an influence of Taekkyon in TKD? I would say "yes, but indirectly" because none of the TKD founders (such as Choi Hong-hi) learnt Taekkyon.

[isshinryu5toforever]

Taekwondo and Taekkyon use different hip motions and power generation. Taekwondo kicks are snappy, meant for striking, Taekkyon kicks are meant for pushing. It even comes out in the names for each kick. Taekwondo kicks are chagi (striking) Taekkyon kicks are milgi (pushing).

As far as the history of Taekkyon, the revisionist history is crazy, but the actual history is a lot more tame. It was a village game. It was in serious decline before the Japanese occupation, but I would be shocked if a few people didn't still play through the entire invasion.

[wingedMonkey]

I agree now that both have kind of fed of each other when talking about modern day taekkyun. But the traditional stuff had more of take-downs, locks, and kicks differing from modern day taekkyun. It did exist, just most of it is lost now...probably if you removed all tkd influnces from modern taekkyun, you'd probably find only 10-20% authentic taeekyun...