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Taekwondo Group Picture (1965)

TAE KWON DO HISTORY
The rise of t'aekwondo is an extraordinary tale. Founded only forty years ago, it has grown so rapidly that it is one of the most popular martial arts in the world. During its early years, t'aekwondo was nearly indistinguishable from its parent art, Okinawan karate-do ("Tang [dynasty] hands way" originally, later "empty hands way").

The Korean kongsudo ("empty hands way") and tangsudo ("Tang [dynasty] hands way") of the late 1940s became the t'aesudo ("smashing-kick fist way") of the 1950s. In the 1960s, t'aesudo was renamed t'aekwondo and thereafter received the official support of the South Korean government, developing into a uniquely Korean martial art.

The building of the Kukkiwon and formation of the World Taekwondo Federation (W.T.F.) in the 1970s largely finalized the system of modern t'aekwondo. The internationalization of t'aekwondo begun by Gen. Hong-Hi Choi in the 1960s was continued by the W.T.F. in the 1970s, which resulted in the introduction of t'aekwondo into the 1988 and 1992 Olympics as a demonstration sport. In the year 2000, t'aekwondo become the second Asian martial art (the first being judo) to become an official Olympic sport.

Of course, most writings on t'aekwondo describe the art as several thousand years old but this is not correct. Most of the martial arts practiced in Korea before the nineteenth century were merely reflections of Chinese martial arts.

The three most common pieces of evidence for the antiquity of t'aekwondo -- the tomb murals of Koguryo kingdom, the statue of Kumkang-Yuksa, and the Muye tobo t'ongji (1790s) -- actually show that early Korean martial arts were largely derivative of Chinese martial arts.

Early drawings of Taekwondo

First, the tomb murals of the Koguryo dynasty (3-427 A.D.) do indeed show martial arts being practiced, but these murals are now located in modern Manchuria, not Korea. This of course is a mere technicality, since the Koguryo kingdom included much of both northern Korea and Manchuria, but it is also true that the Koguryo kingdom was heavily influenced by the Chinese. In fact, Koguryo was the easternmost outpost of Han dynasty China (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), and the martial arts depicted in Koguryo tomb murals closely resemble those in the tomb murals of the Eastern Han, located in what is now eastern China. This suggests that the form of Koguryo-era martial arts emerged because of Chinese cultural influence, rather than independent development by the future Koreans.

Second, the statue of Kumkang-Yuksa at Sokkuram, which is often cited as the figure of an ancient warrior practicing t'aekwondo, is in fact a Buddhist guardian figure found through-out East Asia, and thus cannot be said to be unique to Korea either.

Finally, and most conclusively, the Muye tobo t'ongji (Illustrated Manual of Martial Arts) of the 1790s describes Chinese tactics and martial skills including quan-fa ("boxing"; lit. "fist method"), quotes classical Chinese sources, and was written by a scholar famed for his erudition in classical Chinese.