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    Taekwondo: The Unity of Body, Mind and Spirit
    Taekwondo: The Unity of Body, Mind and Spirit
    Taekwondo: The Unity of Body, Mind and Spirit
    Ebook172 pages1 hour

    Taekwondo: The Unity of Body, Mind and Spirit

    By NB Armstrong

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    About this ebook

    Taekwondo, which literally means “the way of the hand and foot,” is an indigenous Korean tradition and the world’s most popular martial art. This book is an excellent guide for people new to the sport as well as those familiar with the beauty, efficiency and sophistication of taekwondo.
    The chapters cover topics ranging from taekwondo’s origins in Korea and the meanings of both the martial art and sport to taekwondo’s rapid spread worldwide and adoption as an official Olympic event. Anything and everything about taekwondo is jam-packed in this book, which appeals to both the novice and the advanced black belt.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeoul Selection
    Release dateOct 21, 2015
    ISBN9781624120503
    Taekwondo: The Unity of Body, Mind and Spirit

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    Book preview

    Taekwondo - NB Armstrong

    master

    In recent decades, Korea has raised its global sporting profile with success in numerous world competitive events. In golf, where as of 2013 Korean women held four out of the top ten ranking positions; in soccer, where the national team reached the semifinals of the World Cup Korea co-hosted in 2002; and with repeated Olympic golds in archery and wrestling, among others, Korea can justifiably add sports to its portfolio of achievements in the modern world. Korea’s success in archery and wrestling is rooted in the country’s indigenous versions of the sports, practiced over millennia. But their expression is achieved in an internationally codified form of the sports that Korean competitors must adapt to as an agreed-upon standard. So if you were to ask the average international sports fan which sport they most closely identify with Korea, he or she would say none of the above. The answer would be taekwondo. And today, eighty million people around the world practice the Korean martial art.

    The word taekwondo instantly conjures up the image of men and women dressed in dobok, the taekwondo uniform, belt tail hanging down from its sides, wearing, if in contest, protective head and body gear as they deploy one of dozens of endlessly drilled blocks, kicks and punches on the padded surface of a dojang. By 1989 taekwondo, a sport whose first international federation, the ITF, wasn’t founded until 1966, was the most popular martial art in the world. Just how did this ancient folk method of unarmed self-defense rise in that brief span of decades to become a competitive event in the Pan-American, Asian and African Games, before full acceptance as an official Olympic sport at Sydney in 2000?

    Taekwondo quarterfinal match at the 2012 London Summer Olympics

    The answer is to be found in the breadth of taekwondo’s appeal. Like kimchi or ginseng, taekwondo is synonymous with Korea. Specific features of Korea’s culture and history gave birth to taekwondo and determined its evolution: the country’s wildlife, clothing, climate, forests and mountains. Its religious and cultural beliefs are all entwined in the practice and ethics of taekwondo. To learn taekwondo is to immerse oneself in a mental approach to physical combat deriving from a particular place. However, the rapid spread and popular appeal of taekwondo across every continent suggests that the art incorporates characteristics that transcend the local and national. Taekwondo has been accepted and disseminated by third-party adherents, independent of Koreans themselves, and has made its own contribution to world culture. It holds universal appeal.

    Identifying a single element that gives taekwondo its universal appeal is as elusive as trying to identify a single element of any other artistic or cultural product that has achieved world renown. But the general observer might note how taekwondo’s harmonistic eastern ethos is conjoined with a well-defined systematization of sporting rules and principles to form a pastime open to all, an all-inclusive form of activity, expression, hobby and play.

    Taekwondo combines ancient elements of ritual etiquette with physical exercise. It can be practiced alone or in a room with a hundred fellow players. It can be practiced in a winter camp deep in Mt. Jirisan or in the humid air of a Seoul rooftop in July. And this flexibility has been transferred to any environment in the world: Uganda, Brunei, Afghanistan and Siberia all have dojang. Taekwondo’s reuniting of man with his environment is not the only abiding, atavistic part of its appeal. It also engages as a permanent bastion of respect in a modern world which, in many parts, has experienced a dissolution of the old foundations of authority. A practitioner of taekwondo cannot be respected solely through a display of technically advanced aggression. This martial art stresses the ritual of processes in the same way that other touchstones of tradition do, such as the Korean tea at the ceremony. Practitioners of taekwondo, be they advanced combatants of official match level or part time dilettantes, can all appreciate this martial arts depth.

    BASIC RULES OF TAEKWONDO

    Athens, 2004. The Olympic Taekwondo Hall of the Faliro Olympic Complex. The capacity eight-thousand-strong crowd is as on edge as the athletes adjusting their head gear for the final time before they enter the ten meter by ten meter ring. They approach, face each other and pause briefly before bowing from the waist. Start! shouts the referee, who urges them to fight with a swift wave of his hand. Hadi Saei of Iran is impatient, bouncing forward on his heels, itching to strike first, while Song Myeong-seob, the young Korean, checks his defensive position.

    Hadi Saei can wait no longer, and shuffles rapidly forward to launch a front kick at Song’s face. He misses, slips and falls. It is a bad start. Saei jumps up and Song pursues him to the middle of the floor, the referee standing between the two. A full thirty seconds pass as they cagily face off, neither wishing to repeat Saei’s early mistake.

    Saei attacks again. He connects with a long front kick, but as the scorer clocks up the Iranian’s point, Song responds with a naraechagi double-turn pivot kick. The naraechagi has been kinematically analyzed in the Korean Journal of Physical Education to take, on average, 0.88 seconds, 53.4 percent of that time used up in preparation moves, which were all but invisible behind the Iranian’s front kick. The time between attack and defense is so short, so adept are the world’s premier taekwondo athletes, that they seem to attack simultaneously. The judges face a hard task separating the two.

    It remains one-one for twenty seconds, a period in which Saei has decided that somehow, in the milliseconds between attack and defense, between thought and action, he has gained the upper hand in the psychological battle. He once again launches the first attack. But once again, before his foot can properly connect, Song responds, and the exchange raises the score to two-two. Round one ends with the men exchanging almost imperceptible bows.

    Two fighters. Three two-minute rounds. One point for an attack to the body protector. Three points for a kick to the head. Foot techniques only allowed using the parts of the foot below the ankle. Fist techniques, in competitive WTF competition, must utilize a closed hand. Appeals, interruptions. Points awarded when permitted techniques deliver full force, abrupt displacement and trembling shock to the legal scoring areas of the body. Disagreement between judges resolved with majority electronic voting. Warnings, point deductions. Deduction of four points entails an automatic loss. Don’t hit an opponent below the waist. Never hit an opponent who is on the ground. If it is a draw after three rounds, a golden point

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