"Sine Wave" in Korean

Sine Wave Motion in Korean

By Sanko Lewis, PhD

From relatively early in Taekwon-Do’s evolution, there has been a type of “verticality”—i.e. up-and-down movements. The term “verticality” was coined by Judy Van Zile, an ethnographer studying Korean traditional dance. She uses the term to describe the conspicuous characteristic of bending-and-straightening of the knees (and other parts of the body) in Korean traditional dance. Such bending-and-straightening of the knees also became a feature of Taekwon-Do, which differs from Japanese Karate in which Taekwon-Do has its roots. Karate prefers little or no “verticality” during stepping. Prototypical Taekwon-Do (i.e., the “Taekwon-Do” of the late 1940s and 1950s) did not have “verticality” as it was basically still Karate, and participants moved according to Japanese body culture. However, “verticality,” which is innate to traditional Korean body culture, slowly seeped into Taekwon-Do movements. By the 1960s, “verticality” was already implied in the “knee-spring” notion. (This focus on the bending or 'spring'-action of the knee is an iconic feature of traditional Korean body culture.)

Initially ITF Taekwon-Do stepping was done in an up-down motion. Around 1981-1983, under the guidance of General Choi Hong-Hi, this up-down execution was amended to a down-up-down execution (or relax-rise-fall, as I prefer to describe it), which became known as the “sine wave motion.” In some of his writings, Stuart Anslow identifies a seminar in 1983 as the year the term “sine wave” became used to describe this down-up-down kinetic expression. This concurs with the first edition of the Korean version of the ITF Encyclopedia in which the English term for this motion is provided as “싸인 웨이브,” which is the transliteration of the English term “sine wave.”

The common assumption is that General Choi appropriated the term “sine wave” to infuse a scientific notion to this type of movement. This is an assumption I held too for quite some time, but it has always made me rather uncomfortable because it is not scientifically sound. The contemporary down-up-down manifestation mimics the shape of a cosine wave, not a sine wave that has an up-down-up shape, if we start at 0 (i.e., X = 0).  

I began to wonder what term General Choi used in Korean, so I looked up what term is used in my Korean versions of the ITF Encyclopedia. There are two synonyms in Korean for “sine wave”: jeonghyeon-pa 정현파 and sain-pa 사인파 (the latter is simply an Anglicanism of sine-wave). Unexpectedly, neither of these words are used in the Korean versions of the ITF Encyclopedia. The Korean term has actually no relation to this scientific concept. Instead, the Korean version of the ITF Encyclopedia uses the term hwaldeung-pado 활등파도, which literally translates as “bow-back waveform.”

What does this mean? Literally, bow-back refers to one side of a bow (archery weapon). The English collocation is “back-of-the-bow,” and refers to the outside of the bow, which is the side facing away from the bowstring. Whereas the side that faces the bowstring is called the belly-of-the-bow. When the bow is stringed, and the archer draws the bow, the wooden bow is arched into an obvious curve (the typical bow shape).

In other words, the original Korean term simply refers to the curvature of the wave form, which should resemble a smooth crescent or bow-like shape; this shape is contrasted in the Encyclopaedia with the “saw-tooth wave” (abrupt up-and-down movements rather than naturally curved movements) and the “horizontal wave” (keeping one's head level throughout the movement), which are incorrect ways of moving in ITF Taekwon-Do.

Upon further investigation I was surprised to note that the transliteration of the Korean term in the 1999 version of the English Encyclopedia (and presumably all subsequent editions) is not hwaldeung-pado 활등파도. Instead, it is yulson. Because the English version of the Encyclopedia doesn’t use hangeul (the Korean alphabet), but only transliterations of the Korean words, it required some effort to try and figure out what the word means. “Yulson” can be written in Korean in various ways 율손, 율선, 열손, 열선—each with different possible meanings. Discussions with native Korean speakers seem to all agree on the second variant: 율선, which is Romanized according to South Korea’s current system as “yulseon.” Finding a proper translation for yulson 율선 is not straightforward.

The translation for yulson 율선 律旋 given by the dictionaries I checked is “melody”. This translation was affirmed to me by a Korean Taekwon-Do master (8th Dan) I consulted. This word is hardly used in modern Korean. A more recognizable term for “melody” is garak 가락, which dictionaries provide as a synonym for yulson 율선. If this is indeed the correct translation, my Korean friends suggest that yulson implies the melodious movement of a tune. It is noteworthy that Korean traditional music has a “curved melodic line with typical vibrato known as nonghyeon or nongeum”—I got this explanation from Professor Sheen Dae-Cheol 신대철 of the Academy of Korean Studies, during a lecture on the aesthetic characteristics of Korean traditional music. If this is the correct understanding of yulson 율선, then we may assume that it refers to the “curved melodic line with typical vibrato,” which may be represented by the oscillating shape of a sine wave.

However, with all due respect to my Korean friends, I’m not completely convinced about the “melody”-hypothesis. The reason for my doubt is that suffix “-son” [-선]. The same page in the ITF Encyclopedia that mentions yulson 율선 as translation for sine wave, also lists soopyong-son and topnal-son as translations for “Horizontal Wave” and “Saw Tooth Wave” respectively. (Notice the same “-son” suffix used in these words.) In the Korean versions of the ITF Encyclopedia, the Korean term is not “-son”, but “-pado” 파도. The relevant pages in the Korean version of the encyclopedia (Volume 4, p. 195) and the Korean version of the condensed encyclopedia (p. 322) lists Sine Wave as 활등파도 hwaldeung-pado, Horizontal Wave as 수평파도 soopyong-pado, and Saw Tooth Wave as 톱날파도 topnal-pado. It is clear, therefore, that “-son” -선 has to have the same or similar meaning as “pado” 파도 which literally translates as wave.

Therefore, a more likely translation of -son is based on a different hanja 線 that means “line.” This better matches the accompanying pictures in the Encyclopedia that shows drawings of a sine wave line, a horizontal line, and a saw tooth line.

This brings us back to the meaning of yul 율 in the term yulson 율선. I suggest that it is based on another hanja 率 that means “rate” or “frequency.” For instance, one’s pulse is biyul 비율, literally “blood-rate”. The alternative hanja 律 means “a law, a rule, a statue, a regulation” which doesn’t seem to fit. On the other hand, “rate/frequency” 率 seems sensible, because a sine wave can accurately be described as a line depicting a frequency. This matches with how some (North) Korean masters describe the sinewave motion as “rhythmic motion”.

Consequently, based on the Korean terms hwadeung-pado (back-of-the-bow wave) and yulson (melodic shape or frequency line), the intention was not to invoke scientific notions of “sine” or “cosine” waves in particular. The picture in the Encyclopedia doesn’t provide us with a single truncated sine wave (or cosine wave), but instead shows a continuous wave. The argument whether the movement looks more like a sinewave or a co-sinewave misses the point. General Choi was using a metaphoric descriptor to depict the smooth curvature of the stepping motion. The stepping should be smooth like a (sine)wave or smooth like the back-of-the-bow. The metaphors are clearly intended to suggest smooth “verticality”; which General Choi juxtaposed with a stepping motion that has no vertical movement (“horizontal wave”) on the one hand or a rugged (“saw-tooth”) movement on the other hand.

While the Korean Encyclopaedia uses the term “bow-back waveform” 활등파도, it also includes the English translation as “싸인 웨이브,” which is the transliteration of the English term “sine wave.” It is not clear why General Choi chose the metaphor of a bow in Korean, but the sine wave in English. It might have been that he thought few Western people are familiar enough with the archery weapon; or, maybe he did choose to use the scientific term “sine wave” to add some scientific notion to the technique.

Nevertheless, another question may be asked: why the change from the original up-down to the current down-up-down motion for most standard movements in ITF Taekwon-Do? The common assumption that the term “sine wave” (or “co-sinewave”) explains the three phases (down-up-down) is not supported by the Korean terminology used by General Choi. The Korean terms hwadeung-pado and yulson, whether understood literally or metaphorically, do not suggest any number of phases (ups-and-downs) in the motion.

There are some possibilities: 

Several people believe it was a political move by General Choi to discredit masters that were not loyal to him and had left the ITF. By introducing this change the General could claim that they are not teaching the founder’s “authentic” Taekwon-Do. A proponent of this view includes Mr. Alex Gillis, the author of the historical exposé A Killing Art: The Untold History of Tae Kwon Do.

Another possibility proposed by myself (a Korean body culture researcher) and Dr He-Young Kimm (Korean martial arts historian and author of Taekwondo History) is that the General introduced a three-beat rhythm as part of his continuous effort to make Taekwon-Do a truly Korean art. Moving according to a three-beat rhythm can be seen in Taekkyeon (a Korean folk martial art) as well as traditional Korean dance, and is the basic rhythm used in Korean traditional music. The change to a three-beat rhythm is a departure from the Japanese two-beat rhythm found in Karate. The three-beat rhythm in ITF Taekwon-Do is achieved by an initial conscious relaxation, followed by an up-down (or rise-fall) movement when executing many techniques. This initial relaxation was, as far as I am concerned, an ingenious contribution to ITF Taekwon-Do’s makeup. It has completely changed the way Taekwon-Do is performed—moving it away from Taekwon-Do’s Karate roots towards a more naturalistic Korean way of moving (emphasizing relaxation over tension). Of course, my and Dr. Kimm’s cultural hypothesis doesn’t exclude Mr. Gillis’ political hypothesis.

In short, the term used in the Korean versions of the ITF Taekwon-Do Encyclopaedia to describe the stepping motion is not “sine wave”—but rather “back-of-the-bow waveform”; in other words, a wavelike movement like the smooth curved shape of a bow. It should obviously be understood as a visual metaphor, and not as some inclusion of a trigonometrical function to increase power. 

Royal Asiatic Society Lecture: Movement Characteristics of Korean Traditional Dance and Martial Arts

On Tuesday, 10 November 2020, I gave a lecture to the Royal Asiatic Society - Korea Branch, in Seoul. The lecture occurred via Zoom and was recorded.  Below is how the lecture was advertised, and below that is the YouTube link to watch the recording online. 

Movement Characteristics of Korean Traditional Dance and Martial Arts

In this lecture, Dr. Sanko Lewis reveals several key characteristics that give Korean traditional dance and martial arts their particular “Korean flavor.” Through ethnographic research, Dr. Lewis identifies similar kinetic principles employed in the traditional Korean movement disciplines and discuss their cultural origins and technical functions. He also points out how attempts to appeal to a younger audience may cause a martial art to lose its traditional identity; for example, taekwondo’s inclusion of K-pop music and urban dance is eroding those characteristics that taekwondo shared with traditional Korean disciplines such as traditional dance. After this lecture, you will be able to identify the movement characteristics of Korean traditional dance and martial arts, which will enable you to recognize and have a better appreciation for the kinetic aspect of Korea’s intangible heritage.

https://youtu.be/jPCXvRygq_4

Korean Dance, Sine-Wave Movement, and Breathing

I recently took up Korean traditional dancing again. I'm taking classes offered by the National Theater of Korea, which also offers classes in Korean traditional drumming (that I also learned before), and Korean panseori (traditional singing). The reason for taking traditional dance (and why I previously took Korean drumming) is to continue my understanding of traditional Korean body culture.

Attending the recent dancing classes affirmed again the strong similarities with the way we move in ITF Taekwon-Do. Something that is particularly standing out for me this time is breathing in dancing, and how it correlates with the breathing we do in ITF Taekwon-Do. My friend Dr John Johnson also sent me some academic articles about breathing in Korean dancing which I'm slowly working through (as they are in Korean). The following quotation is from another article that I downloaded from somewhere else long ago, which illustrates the similarities between breathing in ITF Taekwon-Do and traditional Korean dance:

"When inhaling the body expands, rising, moving out or up, with arms and legs being lifted and stretched. When exhaling the body contracts, sinking, moving in or down, with arms and legs being lowered or bent." -- Dr. Young-Ae Park, "The Two Characteristics of Korean Dance".

Korean dance movements start from a lowered position with the limbs relaxed and the knees bent. This is the same for ITF Taekwon-Do techniques that start in a neutral position (sometimes known as the intermediate position), as I explained in a different post long ago.  In Korean dance, the dancer will start a movement by "rising, moving out or up" which corresponds with an inhalation. This is the same with most ITF Taekwon-Do techniques: the legs are extended, the body raised and the technique is "loaded" for execution. Next, the technique is "released" corresponding to a "sinking, moving in or down . . . and the legs being lowered or bent" while exhaling.

In Korean dance, such up and down movements, with associated breathing, includes more layers of detail, including mental states, postural nuances, particular points of relaxation and tension. The same can be said for the different techniques in Taekwon-Do, of course. I hope to write an article about this sometime, and will probably write about my experience in traditional Korean dance here on this blog in the future.

ITF's Sine Wave Motion and Korean Body Culture

Every so often I stumble upon (or am pulled into) an online conversation about ITF Taekwon-Do’s sine wave motion. This happened again recently. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to discuss all the points addressed on these online discourses. Many of the concerns I have addressed here on my blog, over the years. This blog post is in response to one recent comment on a sine wave motion related discussion:

“[The sine wave motion] was only ‘created’ [by General Choi] to discredit the pioneer instructors who left the ITF, saying they were not teaching real Tae Kwon-Do.”

The writer of this comment may have gotten this view from Alex Gillis’ book A Killing Art: The Untold History of Tae Kwon Do, Updated and Revised (2nd ed. p. 149). Unfortunately, that would be a wrong reading of the text, and a wrong understanding of the evolution of ITF Taekwon-Do under General Choi. I concede that Gillis does suggest that the sine wave motion was used politically to discredit other instructors for not doing his version of Taekwon-Do; however, the text doesn’t explicitly state that that was the reason the sine wave motion was “created”. (Footnote 1)

It is my opinion that the “creation” (for lack of a better term) of the sine wave motion was to make Taekwon-Do more authentically Korean. From early on, General Choi was on a mission to make a Korean art. It is well known that Taekwon-Do was originally, primarily based on Japanese (Shotokan) Karate. It is also a known fact that General Choi purposefully set out to make a “Korean” martial art, and started making significant changes to the karate he studied in Japan. His development of Taekwon-Do away from Japanese Karate towards a more Korean martial art was a continual process. Scholars like myself and Dr. He-Young Kimm agree that the thing that changed Taekwon-Do from being a Japanese style to a Korean style was not the superficial alteration of where the arms cross for blocks or such technicalities, or even the development of new patterns, which are based on very similar templates than Japanese Karate. Instead, the thing that changed the art from being Japanese is the exchange for Korean “traditional body movement” (Taekwondo History, p. 40). Kimm correctly states that the sine wave motion’s “up-and-down motion ... is in harmony with Korean traditional body culture” and that it has its origin in “traditional Korean body culture” (p. 81). In fact, Kimm goes so far as to say that Taekwon-Do only became a “true Korean martial art through the use of the ‘sine wave’ motion in the early 1980s” (27). It is the sine wave motion which forever changed the DNA, so to speak, of Taekwon-Do, because the sine wave motion is based on the DNA of Korean body culture, as opposed to Japanese body culture. (For what it is worth, martial arts historian Dr. He-Young Kimm is not an ITF Taekwon-Do practitioner, so his comments come with a degree of objectivity that I as an ITF practitioner might be perceived to lack.)

I have lived in Korea now for nearly a decade, and researching Korean body culture has been an ongoing interest of mine. I cannot count how many Korean traditional dance performances I have seen (as I attend dance performance sometimes several times a month); I’ve spoken to quite a few traditional Korean dancers and choreographers (including traditional dance scholars); I’ve studied Taekkyeon (Korea’s “folk” martial art) and discussed the movements with highly acclaimed Taekkyeon masters; I’m currently studying Korean drumming, at the National Theater of Korea, to better understand traditional Korean rhythm; I’ve even looked into Korean shamanism in order to get a better understanding of Korean body culture. While my researched is still ongoing, here are two significant elements that I think essential to Korean body culture:

First, Korean body culture has an intentional “verticality.” I came across the term the first time in the book Korean Dance: Pure Emotion and Energy (Korea Essentials Book 15), which describes it as follows:

The theme of up-and-down movements persists in Korean dance. In slower forms like court dances and those influenced by Buddhism, dancers regularly rotate between bending and extending their knees. In faster dances such as mask dances and certain folk dances, the bent knees are released in a burst of kinetic energy into a jump.” (p. 15.)

Simply put, “verticality” refers to up-and-down movements, usually achieved through the bending and straightening of the knees. However, this “verticality” doesn’t always have to involve the knees; for instance, apart from using the knees, in Korean traditional dance, the “verticality” is often emphasized by the lifting and dropping of the shoulders. “Verticality” is also noticeable with Korean drummers while seated, so as a concept it can be any type of up-and-down movement of the body.

The Korean term used for how this “verticality” is accomplished is gulshin dongjak 굴신 동작, which can roughly be translated into English as “springiness” or “elasticity”, although more often as “bending and stretching” or “extension and contraction”.

The second element of traditional Korean body culture is a three-beat rhythm. Basic Korean traditional dances, as well as traditional Korean music, usually follow a ¾ meter. We see a three-beat rhythm used in the basic stepping (pumbalbki 품밟기) of the Korean folk martial art Taekkyeon 택견, and we notice a three beat rhythm in the sine wave motion in ITF Taekwon-Do. (The origin of the three beat may by the philosophical concept of sam-yoso 삼요소, as the idea of yin-yang and Korea’s three-lobed yin-yang known as sam-taegeuk 삼태극 is part of Korean traditional dance.)

The sine wave motion has brought to ITF Taekwon-Do these two elements: a clear sense of verticality and a three beat rhythm. Thus, I disagree that the sine wave motion was simply “created” to discredit non-ITF practitioners. No, the sine wave was “created” to make Taekwon-Do a truly Korean martial art, rather than just a rebranding of Karate. The sine wave is one of many deliberate changes made by General Choi in his pursuit of creating an authentically Korean martial art.

A part of me want to be so rash as to say that if you practice Taekwon-Do as a Korean martial art, then gulshin dongjak should be part of your system, whether it is the “ITF sine-wave Tul motion” or the “WTF free-sparring stepping/hopping motions”, which according to Dr Kimm both “come from the same type of traditional Korean body culture” (p. 80). If you do not want to do gulshin dongjak, maybe you should rather do Karate, which follows Japanese body culture based on Shintoism.

A final thought on the idea that the sine wave motion was “created” by General Choi: I think the aforementioned discussion on traditional Korean body culture makes it clear that what we refer to as the sine wave motion in ITF Taekwon-Do was not “created” by General Choi at all, but instead is part and partial of traditional Korean body movement, and that General Choi only appropriated this into Taekwon-Do; he didn't invent it.

The big critique people have against vertical motion in Taekwon-Do is a practical one:

So-what if ITF Taekwon-Do's sine wave motion is an embodiment of traditional Korean movement as seen in other Korean activities such as traditional Korean dance—does the sine wave motion have any practical combative value? 

That is the real critique and my answer to that is, yes, it does have combative value. First, the discerning martial artist will note that the same principles are used in many other martial arts (Footnote 2). Furthermore, the sine wave principle is immensely useful for joint locks and throwing techniques. Also, if you understand how to use it as a way for generating vertical (either upwards or downwards) power, then it compliments the other power generation methods such as the hip rotation a lot. It is also useful in instances where hip rotation is not possible; for example, think of a wedging block or twin punch. Just don’t be one of those daft people that say that the sine wave doesn’t contribute power to techniques moving at a horizontal trajectory. Of course, it doesn’t. If I was a teenager I would have facepalmed myself and exclaimed “duh!”

To conclude, the sine wave motion was used to differentiate between General Choi's Taekwon-Do and other Taekwon-Do; however, that was not the reason for its inclusion in ITF Taekwon-Do. The purpose of the sine wave motion, I am convinced, was to make Taekwon-Do authentically Korean by including two elements that are essential to traditional Korean body culture: verticality and a three beat rhythm. Furthermore, when correctly understood and appropriately applied, the sine wave motion does have practical, combative benefits.

...ooOoo...

Footnote 1: While Alex Gillis doesn’t say that the sine wave motion was created specifically for discrediting other Taekwon-Do practitioners, such a reading is easy to come to, because the preceding paragraph states that the pattern Ju-Che was designed as a gift to communist North Korea, and that the sine wave motion which was used to discredit other Taekwon-Do instructors was also a gift to the North. My opinion is that although the sine wave motion may have been used as a political tool to discredit certain people, that was not the reason for its creation.

Footnote 2: The same principles found in the sine wave motion can also be found in other martial arts. For example:

• Aikido [1, 2]

• Hsing-I / Xingi [1, 2]

• Systema (YouTube)

• Taekkyeon (YouTube)

• Tai-Chi (Chen Style)

Sources Cited:

Gilles, A. 2016. A Killing Art: The Untold History of Tae Kwon Do. Updated and Revised Edition.
Kimm, H. Y. 2013. Taekwondo History.
Seoul Selection. Korean Dance: Pure Emotion and Energy.

Cultural Kinaesthetics

I have not been very active on this blog as of late. Much of it has to do with a lack of time and additional energy to devote to it. A reason for this is that as of this year I started working on post-graduate studies. The good news is that my research focus is in the martial arts.

I recently read an article on Hip Hop dance styles and it suggested that my own theories regarding the development of ITF Taekwon-Do and its unique kinaesthetics may indeed be sound.

Lis Engel's article “Body Poetics of Hip Hop Dance Styles in Copenhagen” (2001) is based on earlier theories on body movement, established by Marcel Mauss in his article from 1934 on “The Techniques of the Body”, and adapted to English in 1973 as “Body Techniques.” In this article, Mauss asserts that “The different ways of moving, the body techniques, vary not just between individuals but even more between societies, educations, proprieties and fashions and that different ways of moving mirror cultural ways of thinking.’’ In other words, people of different cultures and subcultures move in unique ways—ways that reflect their thinking. In her groundwork, Lis Engel's also refers to the Danish philosopher Ole Fogh Kirkeby's who argues that a person's movement (“body-techniques”) “whether everyday body movements, sports, or different dance techniques and styles” (Engel 351), is a manifestation of a person's “body-mind-event attunement” (Engel 352). Put differently, people express themselves, or reveal themselves, through their body movements, whether these are normal, everyday movements or other specialized forms of movement like sport or dance. Engel explains that “Each personality, each group, each culture develops a particular rhythm, a special style of movement and ways of relating to the other. It is learned” (352).

The value of this article for me as a scholar of Taekwon-Do is that it provides an example of how to approach the “poetics” or meaning of movement in an academic way. In a similar way as Lis Engel studies the cultural significance of the movements of Hip Hop dances, it is possible to consider the significance of certain martial arts. Based on the theories of Marcel Mauss and Ole Fogh Kirkeby it would be possible to discover culturally significant information from the “body-techniques” (i.e. kinaesthetics) in the different movements in the martial arts. Theoretically, a Chinese martial art such as Tai Chi Chuan, a Korean martial arts such as Taekkyeon and a Japanese martial art such as Karate should all reveal something of the cultures in which they developed. Furthermore, the way individuals may express themselves uniquely within these martial arts may reveal something of their individual personalities as well. This could make for interesting research on the effect of a martial art on an individual's sense of self and sense of the world.

References:

Engel, Lis (2001), “Body Poetics of Hip Hop Dance Styles in Copenhagen”, Dance Chronicle, 24:3,
351-372.
Kirkeby, Ole Fogh (1997), “Event and Body-Mind: An Outline of a Post-Postmodern Approach to Phenomenology”, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 4 (3), 1–33.
Mauss, Marcel (1973), “Body Techniques”, Economy and Society, 70–88.

Some of the posts I wrote that are related to the above include:

• "Traditional Korean Music and Korean Kinaesthetics"
• "The Value of Patterns (Part 2): Kinaesthetics (Part 1: Relaxation, Body Awareness, and Spacial Awareness)"
• "Kinaesthetics (Part 3: Rhythm & Breathing)"
• "Philosophical Congruence of the Sine-Wave Motion"
• "Sine Wave Motion = Linear Karate Movement + Bobbing Taekkyeon Movement"