General Choi Hong Hi
As a retired Major-General, he was his country's first ambassador to Malaysia. While he did make several visits to North Korea, he never lived there, returning there for the last time only when he was about to pass away.
General Choi was born in the Hwa Dae Myong Chun District of what was to be North Korea during the Japanese Colonial Period and died in P'y?ngyang, the North Korean capital. During his adult life, however, Choi lived in Japan, South Korea, and Canada gaining the rank of "Major-General" during his career in the South Korean army.
As a boy he was educated in Korea under the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. At that time, many of the traditions of the Korean people were suppressed by the Japanese, including the country's ancient martial arts, which were and still are renowned for the dynamic kicking techniques that are taught in them. Choi Hong Hi claims he was trained in the Korean martial art of Taekyon by his calligraphy teacher, Han Il Dong. While the Korea Taekkyon Association apparently states these claims were false it should be noted that Taekkyon developed as both a game and a martial art. Yung Ouyang points out that Taekkyon's origins as a game means that the lack of any sort of lineage records before the recent past is to be completely expected.[1] "Why would anyone want to keep track of who learned from whom how to play a game that was looked down upon anyway? ... Such record keeping is counter-intuitive since if the Japanese had ever gotten hold of such records, the consequences would have been disastrous." Additionally, it was actually the influence of Japanese martial arts on Koreans that can account for the great "concern for lineage and legitimacy. Those who were able to learn formally from masters and had their names in records were probably few in number. The folk nature of taekkyon points to its indigenousness. Obsessiveness with legitimacy through lineage points to something that is foreign and desires exclusivity." As such, the fact that there is no corroboration of Gen. Choi's claim from the Korea Taekkyon Association (as well as Hwang Kee and others) is not surprising. What is surprising is that the organization would even make a claim when there is such a derth of records to begin with.
When he became older he went to Japan to study. Choi had been studying calligraphy and Taek Kyon in Korea under Han Il Dong and upon arrival in Japan he started to study Shotokan Karate as a student of a Korean named Kim Hyun-soo, and after two years of intensive training he was presented with a first Dan Black Belt in Shotokan. He then went into Tokyo University where he was able to visit the Shotokan and perhaps train on occasion under Master Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan. He gained his second Dan and, around this time, started teaching, and became an instructor at the Tokyo YMCA. (there are pictures of Gen. Choi as a student at the main Shotokan dojo when he was a student in Japan which have been published in "Taekwon-Do Times" magazine). Conscripted into the Japanese army in 1943, he was posted to Pyongyang where he became involved in the Korean Independence Movement, resulting in his imprisonment. Wanting to maintain good physical and mental health during his imprisionment, he practiced Karate, alone at first, then by teaching it to the staff of the prison and the other prisoners. Until his liberation at the end of the war he practiced and developed much of the martial art.
Becoming an officer in the new Korean Army after the end of the war, he continued to teach his martial art to his soldiers as well as to American soldiers serving in Korea.
His beliefs and his vision of a different approach to teaching martial arts led General Choi to combine elements of Taek Kyon and Karate techniques to develop a modern martial art. He called it TaeKwonDo, which means "the way of the feet and the hands", and this name was officially adopted on Apirl 11th, 1955.[2]
In 1959, General Choi was named President of the Korean Tae Kwon Do association. Seven years later, on March 22nd 1966, he created the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF), As the Founder of Tae Kwon Do and the President of the ITF, he had the ability to share his art with students everywhere.
After a life dedicated to the development of Tae Kwon Do, a modern martial art based on traditional values, philosophy, and training, General Choi, died of cancer on June 15th, 2002, in the country of his birth.
About Taekwondo
Tae Kwon Do is a martial art developed over 20 centuries ago in Korea. The earliest records of its practice date back to 50BC where tomb paintings show men in fighting stances practising forms known as Taek Kyon.
It is believed that the origins of Taek Kyon date even further back and originated as self-defence against wild animals whose defensive and offensive movements were also the subject of much analysis. Taek Kyon, at the time was only one style of fighting. Others had names such as Subak, Tak Kyon and so on.
By 57 BC Korea had three kingdoms (Koguryo, Paekje and Silla) and, with a certain degree of inevitability, a strong rivalry amongst them led to the focus on the development of very effective fighting techniques.
History, repeatedly, has shown that it is the victor who writes the script and this case was no exception. Silla won its wars against its two rivals and in 668 AD it unified the three kingdoms. Instrumental in its victory were the Hwa Rang Do, an elite group of young men who were devoted to cultivating their bodies and minds and serving the kingdom.
Hwa Rang Do, quite literally, means flowering youth (Hwa=flower, Rang=young man) and the young noblemen of the Hwa Rang Do practised various forms of martial arts. The Hwa Rang Do also developed an honour code and it is this which today forms the philosophical background of Tae Kwon Do.
In 936AD the Silla dynasty came to an end and with it the kingdom. In its place, Wang Kon founded the Koryo dynasty. Koryo is an abbreviation of Koguryo which Wang Kon sought to revive. The modern name Korea is derived directly from the word Koryo.
It was during the Koryo that a new sport was given form. It was called Soo Bakh Do and it was used, principally, as a military training method. Drawing from the many different forms of martial arts which had preceded it Soo Bakh Do used bare hands and feet as a weapon and its intensity was such that it was seen as a very good way of maintaining one's strength and overall fitness. As a result its popularity spread throughout the kingdom of Koryo.
This was the precursor to modern day Tae Kwon Do. Despite its effectiveness as a means of training for warfare however and its popularity with the peasants in the fields by 1492 it had almost disappeared.
What happened was that King Taejo, founder of the Yi dynasty, replaced Buddhism with Confucianism as the state religion. The teachings of Confucius, imported from the refined, rarefied culture of China, dictated that the higher class of man should read poetry and music and the practice of martial arts should be something left to the less refined, even inferior, man.
The Yi dynasty lasted from 1392 to 1910 and during that time the practice of martial arts and the code of honour of the Hwa Rang remained alive in isolated, stubbornly traditional cultural backwaters of Korea.
In 1910 however Korea was invaded by Japan who dominated it until the end of World War II. The Japanese tried to erase all of the Korean culture including its martial arts. As is usual with such situations this brought a stubborn resurgence in the practice of martial arts which now, once more, had a very practical role to play against an invader who strictly controlled the supply of weapons.
Along with occupation, the Japanese also brought karate with them and indeed the quick, straight-line movements which characterise many Tae Kwon Do moves today are a direct result of the legacy left behind by the Japanese army of occupation.
After the end of World War II, when Korea became independent, several Kwans, or fighting styles, arose. These were: Chung Do Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan, Yun Moo Kwan, Chang Moo Kwan, Oh Do Kwan, Ji Do Kwan, Chi Do Kwan and Song Moo Kwan. All these Kwans were united in 1955 under the name of Tae Soo Do.
Korea's struggle to re-discover its identity and many traditions was, with some degree of inevitability, reflected in the subsequent development of its martial arts movement and by the beginning of 1957 several Korean martial arts masters had adopted the name Tae Kwon Do for their form of martial arts, because of its similarity to Tae Kyon.
The very first Tae Kwon Do students were soldiers because General Choi Hong-Hi, who is credited as the father of modern Tae Kwon Do, required his soldiers to train in it.
The police and air force had to train in Tae Kwon Do as well. At the time Tae Kwon Do was still very heavily under the influence of Japanese karate and, indeed, many of its moves and style bore a very close resemblance to Shotokan Karate. In 1961, however, the Korean Tae Kwon Do Union arose from the Soo Bakh Do Association and the Tae Soo Do Association. In 1962 the Korean Amateur Sports Association acknowledged the Korean Tae Kwon Do Union and in 1965 the name was set to Korean Tae Kwon Do Association (KTA).
General Choi Hong-Hi was president of the KTA at the time and he was asked to start the International Tae Kwon Do Federation (ITF) as the international branch of the KTA. What follows next is best described as the rise of the acronyms. In 1961, following the overthrow of the southern government of Korea general Choi left for the United States where he established the ITF as a separate entity, in 1963.
Tae Kwon Do was introduced in the UK in 1967, just four years after the foundation of ITF.
Six years later the World Tae Kwon Do Federation (WTF) was founded and in 1980 it was recognised by the International Olympic Comite (IOC) which made it a demonstration sport in the Olympic Games.
The Korea Tae Kwon Do Association (KTA) is the National Governing Body (NGB) for Tae Kwon Do in the Republic of Korea, just like the United States Tae Kwon Do Union (USTU) is the NGB for Tae Kwon Do in the United States. The World Tae Kwon Do Federation (WTF) is made up of Tae Kwon Do NGBs. These NGBs are member organisations of the WTF. Individuals can be affiliated to the WTF through their NGBs but cannot join the WTF directly!
As the popularity of Tae Kwon Do increased in the west several attempts were made to unite the two Tae Kwon Do organisations but these were unsuccessful.
It was largely because of all this that in August 1983 it was decided to form, in the UK, an organisation that would be run on principals far more democratic than were permitted by the two governing bodies of the time (the ITF and WTF). This became the basis of the Tae Kwon Do Association of Great Britain (TAGB).
Five years later, in April 1988, the TAGB became a founding member of the British Tae Kwon Do Council (BTC). The BTC is the only body recognised by the United Kingdom Sports Council and it incorporates 11 different organisations.
The birth of the TAGB and the formation of the BTC represent a happy chapter in the tumultuous history of Tae Kwon Do. With the power of hindsight it is easy to make light of the differences of organisations which have more in common than not. It would, however, be also proper to reflect that the birth of Tae Kwon Do, its development and its propagation are as much a mirror of its troubled origin and the practical needs which made it possible as they are a telling remark on the apparent inability of its many governing bodies to cast aside their differences and find some common ground.
The TAGB, with over 18,000 members represents the next stage in the development of Tae Kwon Do. With its grounding in the ethos and tenets which were first espoused by the Hwa Rang over 2,000 years ago and its open acceptance and constant development of forms, training techniques and ideas, it stands poised to take an ancient fighting form into the 21st century, successfully linking the distant past with an equally distant, and certainly no less wondrous, future.
In view of this, in 1993, a new world body was formed called Tae Kwon Do International. The new body encompasses both ITF and WTF stylists, it is entirely non-political in orientation and its sole aim is to promote the benefits of Tae Kwon Do as a sport and as a martial art, worldwide. The TAGB is a founding member of this new body.
CONTROL YOUR BREATHING
Breathing mirrors our mind and reveals our inner state. When we are angry our breathing is shallow, when we are relaxed it is long and deep, when we are afraid our breathing speeds up. There is a definate link between our emotional state and the oxygen we take into our body.
Control your breathing.