2024 UNESCO ICM's International Martial Arts Seminar and Book Donations

Last week I participated at the 2024 UNESCO ICM's annual International Martial Arts Seminar. This year the topic focused on mental health and wellbeing through sports and martial arts. 

I am thankful to have been invited and enjoyed learning from all the speakers and other participants. It was great to see some familiar faces, such as Prof Steven Capener and Prof Brian Moore, and also make some new connections.  

I've actually been meaning to visit UNESCO-ICM to donate some books to their fledgling library, which is the only library specifically dedicated to martial arts that I am aware of. 

First, on behalf of Prof Ron Dziwenka, the president of IACT (International Academic Conference for Taekwondo), I donated two books published by IACT, authored by Prof Allan Back and the late grandmaster Daeshik Kim, and edited by Dr John A. Johnson. The books "Foundations of Taekwondo: History, Theory, Academics" and "Martial Meditations: Philosophy and the Essence of Martial Arts" can be ordered through Amazon. 

I also personally donated some books. First, General Choi Honghi's autobiography ("Taekwon-Do and I") in Korean, and the Korean version of the ITF Taekwon-Do Condensed Encyclopedia. The latter is quite difficult to get hold of and quite pricy. But as I had more than one copy, I felt it an important book for the UNESCO-ICM library to have in its collection. Choi Honghi's books were previously banned in South Korea. 

I also donated a copy of my PhD dissertation "Promoting Peace, Practising War: Mohism's Resolution of the Paradoxical Ethics of War and Self-Defence in East Asian Martial Arts". I also donated other books of which I had extra copies, including: "Combative Elbow Strikes: A Guide to Strikes, Blocks, Locks and Take Downs" by Jeff Rosser, a self-defence booklet "NTN Selvforsvar", of the National Taekwon-Do Norway, by Roy Rolstad, and "Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Theory and Technique" by Renzo Gracie and Royler Gracie.

The book donations were received by UNESCO-ICM's Secretary-General Gyujig Kim, who graciously indulged me for photos, and Library Custodian Seonghye Hong who will place the books in their new home at the UNESCO-ICM library. 

Thank you to the staff of UNESCO-ICM for your hard work and for always treating your guests wonderfully. I especially want to mention Hyewon Lee who organized this year's seminar and who invited me to be a participant during the 'expert round table'.

Preserving Korean Body Culture in Traditional Dance and Martial Arts

On 12 November 2020, UNESCO ICM (International Center for Martial Arts) hosted their Annual International Martial Arts Academic Seminar, in Chungju, South Korea at the new UNESCO ICM building. The topic for this year's seminar was COVID-19 Pandemic: Martial Arts Response and Beyond. There was a special session within this seminar dedicated to the book launch of UNESCO's Living Heritage Series: Traditional Martial Arts as Intangible Cultural Heritage. As I contributed a chapter to the book, UNESCO asked me to be a presenter during the special session.

The book is available as both a printed book and e-book. The e-book can be downloaded for free from UNESCO ICM's website as a PDF here. My contribution is chapter 15. 

The seminar was originally supposed to be live-streamed but there was some technical difficulties. However, the event was recorded and the different sessions have been uploaded onto UNESCO ICM's YouTube channel. Below is the special session (Session 2: Traditional Martial Arts as Living Heritage), in which I presented. My presentation starts around the 22 minute mark, and afterwards there was a panel discussion about preserving traditional martial arts in the Korean context in which I also took part.

https://youtu.be/IJjHGIh7HnI?t=1295