Grand Master Park Jung Tae Seminar, Ireland 1987

The Republic of Ireland Taekwon-Do Association (RITA-ITF) recently did the ITF Taekwon-Do world an exquisite favour by uploading onto YouTube a series videos of a technical seminar presented by Grandmaster Park Jung Tae, who was in his time both Secretary General and Technical Director of ITF Taekwon-Do (and later president of GTF).

What I find fascinating about this seminar is that what I'm teaching today in 2012 is not that much different from what he taught in 1987. And I'm specifically referring to the kinaesthetics: e.g. the use of hip twist and sine wave motion (body raising or dropping) in power generation; the employing of a small loop-motion in order to adhere to the “once the movement is in motion it should not stop until it reaches its target”-principle (I like how he said: “No punch comes out from the hip!”); stances and stepping; real focus on “snappiness” in balgyeong techniques, such as knife hand strikes; a clear sense of intermediate positions; and the importance of relaxation. Keep in mind that my personal influences have been quite eclectic: I had trained under instructors from South Africa, England, Australia, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Argentina; technically, I consider my personal techniques to be most closely in line with the Chang Ung ITF group.

Grandmaster Park's seminar goes through the colour belt patterns, starting with Dan-Gun Teul and ending with Choong-Moo Teul. While watching the videos, focus on Grandmaster Park's movements and teaching, rather than that of the participants as some of them are still adjusting their techniques and sometimes perform it clearly wrong.

Dan-Gun 

Do-San 

Won-Hyo

Yul-Gok


Joong-Gun


Toi-Gye

Hwa-Rang

Choong-Moo

Do-San Teul

Do-San is the pseudonym of the patriot Ahn Chang-Ho (1878-1938). The 24 movements represent his entire life which he devoted to furthering the education of Korea and its independence movement.

You can also read a short history of Ahn Chang-Ho's life at TKDTutor.Com. Read a description of the movements here.

Below are YouTube-videos of Do-San Teul as performed by Jaroslaw Suska and Mike Morningstar.