Jidokwan

Jidokwan is one of the original nine schools of the modern Korean martial arts that became Taekwondo and was founded in what is now South Korea at the end of World War II. Its name translates as "School of Wisdom". The Jidokwan in Korea still exists today. It functions as a social fraternal order. Jidokwan supports and endorses the Kukkiwon method of Taekwondo, and supports the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF).

History

The foundations of what was to eventually become Jidokwan were laid down by GM CHUN Sang Sup, who was one of the earliest Koreans to bring Japanese karate back to his homeland.

When he was seventeen years old, GM Chun relocated to Japan to attend College at Takushoku University in Japan, where he took up Shotokan karate under FUNAKOSHI Gichin Sensei, the founder of that system and one of the first to bring karate (originally an Okinawan martial art) to Japan.

Upon GM Chun's return to his native Korea, he began teaching this fighting art at the Chosun Yun Moo Kwan school of Judo, one of the few martial arts schools the Japanese occupying forces allowed to remain open during the period of their military occupation of that country. At this time, GM Chun became very close with another Korean practitioner of the Okinawan/Japanese fighting arts, GM YOON Byung In, who was said to have also studied Ch'uan-fa (another word for Kung-fu) in Manchuria. GM Yoon eventually became a Shudokan karate "Shihan" (Sabum or teacher) under Sensei Kanken Tōyama while studying in Japan. Toyama Sensei was a colleague and fellow martial artist of Sensei Gichin Funakoshi, although he did not consider the karate he was teaching to be a distinct style that differed in form or substance from the generic brand of Shuri-based karate (derived from the Shuri district in Okinawa where it initially evolved) that Funakoshi Sensei had introduced to Japan and which was eventually named Shotokan by Funakoshi Sensei's successors.