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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alex Gillis
Read between
December 14, 2023 - January 4, 2024
Both men stopped speaking to each other in the late 1970s, after the General accused Park of co-operating with the Korean CIA in a kidnapping plot.
Choi Hong Hi accused Park of plotting against him.
He stopped using his Japanese name (Yuseki Nishiyama) and acquired a Korean nickname (chadol, a small stone difficult to break),
Yuseki Nishiyama, Choi's Japanese name.
Within a year, he was teaching Karate to a group of constables. Koreans called the art either Tang Soo Do (Way of the Chinese Hand) or Kong Soo Do (Way of the Empty Hand), the difference in names indicating whose side you were on in the Cold War.
Kong Soo Do
In 1946, when Choi was a second lieutenant, he became ashamed of teaching Japanese Karate to Korean soldiers.
At eighteen years old, Nam had begun training after school five days a week at Won-kuk Lee’s Chung Do Kwan (“gym of the blue way”), the first Karate gym in Korea and the source of many future Tae Kwon Do pioneers.60 Won-kuk Lee was a pioneer of Korean Karate and was a famous martial arts leader who was likely the only Korean to attain a second-degree black belt in Shotokan Karate before 1945.61
Chung Do Kwan
Leaders in the Korean Tae Kwon Do Association met in 1959 to try to unify the martial arts in Korea. Bottom row, from left to right: Hwang Kee (from the Moo Duk Kwan); Yoon Kwei-byung (owner of the Jidokwan); Choi Hong-Hi (wearing uniform); Ro Byung-jik (Song Moo Kwan); an unknown Korean Athletic Association representative; Lee Nam-suk (Chang Moo Kwan); Uhm Woon-kyu (Chung Do Kwan); and Hyun Jong-myung
The Kwans
myung (Chung and Oh Do kwans). Top row, from left: Kim Soon-bae (Chang Moo Kwan); Ko Jae-chun (Chung and Oh Do kwans); Nam Tae-hi (Chung Do Kwan); Lee Houng-sup; and unknown. PHOTO COURTESY OF CHOI HONG-HI.
TKD Pioneers
In May 1973, Kim hosted a world championship for thirty countries at the Kukkiwon,
Kukkiwon 1st world tournament 1973
Choi responded with a 1974 ITF world championship in Montreal, which Nam Tae-hi and Dong-Ja Yang helped run.
1974 tournament in response to WT's world tournament.
Choi’s wife and a second daughter, Meeyun, had already joined him in Canada, thanks to Jhoon Rhee, who had helped Choi’s wife sneak into the Dominican Republic.296 She flew to Canada from there. But Sunny and Jung-Hwa were still stuck in South Korea, and Choi believed they were hostages.
Choi in the Dominican Republic
Once again, sports, and Tae Kwon Do in particular, would hide human-rights atrocities and government-organized corruption in South Korea.
Shame and violence
Around 1963, Park recruited Kim Un-yong into the Korean CIA. In 1970, Park Chong-kyu (crouched) and South Korea’s dictator (sitting in the chair) gave the okay for Kim to steal the name “Tae Kwon Do” and take over its operations.
Kim Un Yong, on of the Founding Members of the Kukkiwon (WT)
Because the IOC had rejected Tae Kwon Do for the 1996 Olympics, Kim Un-yong began a “007 Operation,” as he called it, to sneak Tae Kwon Do into the 2000 Games.
No Taekwondo in 1996 Olympics.
120,000 spectators watched the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Games and saw Kim Un-yong and Chang Ung, heads of the Olympic Committees and of the Tae Kwon Do organizations in their Koreas, enter the stadium holding hands.429 Kim was overcome with emotion as he walked near a specially designed Korean flag that merged North and South Korean symbols.
Korean unification
REPORTER: I watched all three final matches where Korean players fought, and based on what I observed, I believe that all three Korean athletes won. LEE: Only watching the final match would not be enough. In order to understand it as a whole, you have to pay very careful attention beginning with the first match. In this sense, it is not that simple. There are so-called tactics. That is, you kill the strong opponent beforehand. We are not the ones who kill. The judges do. When you tell judges to do their job fairly, they know what to do and they do it. From the beginning of the preliminary
...more
2000 Olympics cheating.
“This is not an everyday dinner for the common people,” Jung-Hwa explained to him. His father refused to listen. In fact, he made it a mission to tell anyone he met that North Korea was doing well. Jung-Hwa realized that his father, who dined with North Korean dignitaries, could not care less for the average North Korean and the gulags that awaited commoners if they complained. Choi’s entire life was Tae Kwon Do, and, in his view, Tae Kwon Do needed the North Koreans.
Choi on North Korea
The ITF split into three groups: one led by a dictatorship (run by Chang Ung, based in North Korea), a second led by Jung-Hwa (based in Canada), and a third led by senior black belts who refused to join the other two (based in Europe).
ITF split
There are many heroes in Tae Kwon Do, many masters who stood up to stupid spies and gods and gangsters, many who refused to become corrupt or violent — and these masters went on to lead millions of people who empowered themselves through Tae Kwon Do. C. K. Choi is one such hero.
C.K. Choi
The Bodhidharma once said that the farther away you are from the truth, the worse your life becomes and the better you feel; self-deception, like good whiskey, helps to get through delusion, corruption, and violence.
C.K. Choi
“They all know where Tae Kwon Do came from,” he told me in 2015, “but they say it’s an old art about two thousand years old — and they talk a lot of nonsense.” In his view, the founder of Tae Kwon Do is General Choi Hong-Hi, who received help from pioneer instructors such as C. K. Choi.
C.K. Choi
Rafaty tried to make the Olympics more inclusive, but the head of the WTF said that he did not have the power to intervene in national affairs. And that was that.
WTF v ITF
“The problem with Tae Kwon Do masters or instructors is that they aren’t willing to help others,” Choi said in his understated way. He has not given up, and around the world, dozens of pioneers like him have not given up. Given what they have survived, these instructors, more than anyone, represent Tae Kwon Do’s tenet of indomitable spirit.
C.K. Choi's spirit
Perhaps the most promising developments in the past decade were two North Korean Tae Kwon Do demonstrations in the U.S. (if you ignored the secret-service agents watching the North Korean athletes and each other during the events).
NK at its finest.
