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

Toi-Gye Teul

TOI-GYE is the pen name of the noted scholar Yi Hwang 이황 (16th century), an authority on neo Confucianism. The 37 movements of the pattern refer to his birthplace on 37 latitude, the diagram represents "scholar".

Yi Hwang was a Neo-Confucianist scholar. Neo-Confucianism was more open to other ideas from Taoism and Buddhism. Historically Confucianism and Taoism stood somewhat opposed to each other. Neo-Confucianism tried to merge elements from the three great Oriental philosophies. Still, Neo-Confucianism kept a quite materialistic view of the world and did not believe in such Buddhist concepts as Karma and reincarnation. They did, however, believe in Ki -- the life force. However, they placed ephasis, rather on, I. The latter, according to Neo-Confucianism, is the base form of Ki and permeates everything in the world, while Ki is more specific manifestations of I.

Yi Hwang was a noted scholar, Confucian lecturer, and author of philosophical texts. As an extremely principled high level government official he was even exiled on more than one occasion for stringently sticking to his principles, while working under four different kings during his long career. Apart from his academic achievements, he was also a poet and calligraphy artist.

Yi Hwang's pen name, Toi-Gye 퇴계, translates as "Retreating Creek"; however, the pattern contains no retreating movements. All the movements meet the opponents head on with attentive guarding postures, engaging blocks and forward stepping attacks.

An interesting aspect of the pattern Toi-Gye is the repetition of six mountain blocks. A mountain is a symbol for strength and fortitude, which may refer to Yi Hwang's principled life. The pattern also has an interesting combination and repitition of circular blocks.