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Chinese
Character for
ancient "Korea" combines
"big" and "bow."
Subyokchigi
Taekkyon
GoongDo
Ssireum
Kumdo
Yudo
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Korean
Martial Arts
Korean
martial arts express many ironies. Korea is a small nation
surrounded by historically imperial powers. Having been invaded
over 300 times during its history, the idea of maintaining
cultural independence from powerful neighbors has burned strong in
Korean thought.
As a
crossroads between Chinese, Mongol, Siberian, and Japanese
military developments, Korea's historical exposure to fighting
arts dates back nearly two millennium. Ironically, this lack of
isolation did not permit a strong identity of indigenous martial
art development, but rather fostered transitional and adoptive
methods of armed and unarmed combat. This historical process has
continued in the Twentieth Century.
Modern Korean
arts, founded on Japanese styles introduced during the period of
occupation, 1910-1945, have nonetheless evolved in typically
distinctive fashion. Such arts as Yudo, Kumdo and Taekwondo
demonstrate this modern heritage and development. However,
remnants of older Korean styles, Ssireum, Taekkyon, and GoongDo,
contain hints of history and technical style which suggest that
these arts in turn may have been foundation arts, centuries ago,
for the Japanese styles developed in the late 19th and 20th
centuries.
Korean
archery, for instance, uses a different bow than the Japanese
style, but the ancient Chinese character for "Korea"
suggests that Korean archery had a powerful historical impact and
may repre sent
a foundation art for development of archery in the East.
Simiarly,
Ssireum, a folk wrestling, may be a predecessor to, or evolved
contemporaneously with, the Japanese Sumo. Taekkyon, played in
recent times as a game of balance, may have also represented at
one time a transitional fighting form from China, as To-de did in
Okinawa, leading to the development of Karate in the 20th Century.
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