Contrary to popular belief, Taekwon-Do is not a 2000 year old Korean martial art and its connection to the ancient Korean art of Taek-Kyon is tenous at best. It is in fact derived, for the most part, from Shotokan Karate. It also has other martial arts (such as Judo, Hapkido, Boxing, Wrestling, and even Chinese martial arts influences) fused into what is now known as ‘The Art of Hand and Foot’ aka Taekwon-Do.
Comment by Øyvind Kveine Haugen:
It should be noted that this history is severely disputed by the WTF and Kukkiwon.
General Choi was born in what is today North Korea, and in 1979/1980 he went on a trip to the D.P.R.K. to promote Taekwon-Do as a way to secure support for the ITF. Afterwards, possibly to further please the Northern regime, he removed pattern Ko-Dang (which was named after a nationalist leader of the Korean Presbyterian Church) and created the pattern Juche (named after the North Korean cult ideology of “self-reliance”), and even left Canada for some time with his family in 1982 to live in North Korea and continue to teach and spread Taekwon-Do.
After a while, North Korea started to send out native instructors to establish Taekwon-Do / ITF clubs in Europe and North America, and this is the reason why the ITF started to be known as “North Korea Taekwondo” and WTF be “South Korea Taekwondo”.
In 1945 Korea was liberated from the Japanese and Korea officially formed its armed forces (aka its modern military). Although Japanese martial arts remained being taught in Korea (by Korean instructors) in the various gyms, General Choi Hong Hi wanted to break away from the arts of Japan, to have a martial art to train his soldiers in that had Korean values and at the same time instill national pride following the devastating effects of his country being occupied by Japan. He had learned Karate in Japan during the occupation of his country and had been teaching it to the soldiers under his command since 1946.
In 1954 during the Korean war, then President Syngman Rhee saw a demonstration by the military Korean martial arts masters under General Choi’s leadership and was so impressed that he ordered it be taught to all military personnel. This blessing from the president propelled Korean martial arts forward like a rocket. General Choi is known to have been teaching martial arts to his 29th Infantry Division on Cheju Island already and in 1954 he founded the Oh Do Kwan ( = Gym of My Way) along with Lieutenant Nam Tae Hi, which was seen as the catalyst for the formation of Tae Kwon Do, as while General Choi taught the soldiers the Karate he had learned, he was at the same time formulation Taekwon-Do.
A unification effort was made to unite the various Kwans that were teaching in Korea, in order to make them a unified single Korean martial art, and despite opposition, the art was officially named on the 11th of April 1955, which is known as the birth date of Taekwon-Do. Despite this, for many years only General Choi’s soldiers in the Oh Do Kwan and their civilian counterparts in the Chung Do Kwan used the term “Tae Kwon Do” for their martial art.
Naming this emerging art was simply the beginning, in fact even when officially named not one of the patterns were fully formulated. The first Ch’ang Hon pattern (Hwa-Rang) was completed some time late in 1955, until then they used the Kata from their father art of Shotokan Karate. Over time Tae Kwon Do moved further away from its Karate roots by devising more new patterns, named after Korean historical figures or events; emphasizing the rising and dropping into techniques (which were later termed ‘sine-wave’) as opposed to the Karate way of keeping the head the same height throughout; and of course introducing many more kicking techniques. Eventually, Taekwon-Do broke the chains of its roots and became distinct in its own right.
Even though Taekwon-Do has evolved into a martial art for all, including a large sport based side, it should be remembered that it was formulated as an art of self-defense, by soldiers, for soldiers, and its effectiveness was no more evident than when it was actually used on the battle fields of Vietnam, where it was so feared by the Viet Cong that soldiers were told to avoid engaging in combat, even when the Korean soldiers were unarmed, due to their knowledge of Taekwon-Do.
Taekwon-Do is then one of only a few martial arts that have a proven, battlefield tested track record. Following the battle of Tra Binh Dong, Times magazine ran an article that stated “it was knife to knife and hand-to-hand – and in that sort of fighting the Koreans, with their deadly tae kwon do (a form of karate), are unbeatable. When the action stopped shortly after dawn, 104 enemy bodies lay within the wire, many of them eviscerated or brained” (Time Magazine, 24th February 1967) .
1959 was an influential year for Taekwon-Do as well as the start of the Vietnamese war. The Korean Taekwon-Do Association (KTA) was formed, an armed forces demonstration toured Taiwan and South Vietnam, and General Choi published his first book on the art of Taekwon-Do. Later, in 1962, the first Taekwon-Do tournament was held.
1962 was also the year that General Choi was forced to retire from the military due to his lack of support for President Park Jung Hee who took power following a bloodless coup in 1961. Instead, General Choi was made an ambassador and shipped off to Malaysia, where he continued to teach and formulate Taekwon-Do, which included formulating a total of 15 more Ch’ang Hon patterns.
General Choi returned to Korea in 1964 to find that, due to politics, the Korean Taekwondo Association (KTA) had ceased to exist and had been replaced with the Korean Tae Soo Do Association (also shortened KTA) which was formed late in 1962. However, in 1965 General Choi was elected president of the KTA and managed to change the name back to the Korean Taekwondo Association. He also published his second book on ‘his’ martial art and lead a demonstration team around South East Asia and Europe.
On the 22nd March, 1966 General Choi formed the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) in Seoul, South Korea, with Master Kim Jong Chan designing both the ITF logo and the ITF flag.
As General Choi became more and more opposed to President Park’s regime he eventually self-exiled himself to Canada in 1972, where he also relocated the ITF headquarters, as well as publishing the third book on Taekwon-Do. This was the first book to contain all of the patterns, which had now become a total of 24.
Taekwon-Do (or Taekwondo depending on the person writing) is full of politics. It was politics that caused the ITF to relocate to Canada in 1972, and it was politics that lead to the formation of the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) in 1973.