002 Defeating Expectations
At the end of the nineteenth century, Japan conquered and occupied Korea. The occupation lasted almost fifty years. In that time, the Koreans were methodically forced to give up their culture, to worship the Japanese emperor, and to acknowledge that the Japanese were superior to the Koreans in every way. The few Koreans who were allowed to excel in athletics or science or the arts were forced to take Japanese names.Korean martial arts had to go underground, but they were still practiced. In fact, interest in them grew steadily during the occupation. And along with the study of their indigenous fighting styles came fierce national pride.
After World War II, Korea was fully liberated from the Japanese. But the country had been sacked and pillaged by her former conquerors. Within a few years, Communist forces based in the northern part of the country would mount an attempt to seize control of the entire Choson peninsula, and the Korean War would again inflict suffering and death up and down the length of that country.
But in the interim between the wars, several martial arts schools in Korea conferred and agreed to form a federation of schools that would form a national martial art of Korea, and thus tae kwon do was born. Over the years, more of the schools, called "kwans," joined this national movement. Some still held out, fearing that their own distinctives would be lost. And so even as the influential Chung Do Kwan--with its hard hitting power kicks---and Moo Duk Kwan---with its more circular and snapping kicks--became part of tae kwon do, Tang Soo Do remained separate, as did Kuk Sul Won.
The early masters of tae kwon do had an enormous task before them. They had to revitalize the spirit of the nation of Korea. They had to disprove the Japanese cultural mindset that said that Koreans were inferior. And, as the country was wracked with war, most tae kwon do teachers wanted to repel Communism.
Incredibly dedicated, fierce, loyal, and pro-American, the World Tae kwon do Federation (WTF) was born. The man who would become my first tae kwon do instructor, Billy Hong, was a war orphan when the Korean war ended. He made his way to Seoul, lived at the WTF headquarters, and trained every day. He once told a friend that all he did was clean the training hall, train vigorously for hours at a time, eat, and sleep, and then he did it all again, day after day, until he lost track of when it was day and when it was night. He lived to master the kicks of tae kwon do. Eventually, his hard work was rewarded, and he was chosen to go with three other young men to Japan to an international martial arts contest. This was the day they had waited for, and each young man felt that the honor of the Korean nation rested on him.
It was the early 1960's, and in those days competitions among martial artists were dangerous and could be deadly. Men occasionally were killed in karate competition, and injury was certainly a common risk. The young Korean men came to the tournament and were treated coldly by their hosts, but their instructions had been precise. They were to behave well. There must be no hint of a bad attitude.
The Japanese fighters had fallen into the trap that takes down so many. They had no respect for the small team from Korea, and they had never bothered to study Korean fighting theory. Japanese karate styles in those days emphasized close-in fighting. The punch was everything. Fighters tended to move in straight lines back and forth as they attacked, parried, counter attacked. Many Japanese styles in 1962 did not even use the roundhouse kick, and the back kick was completely unknown except as a technique to stomp the shin or instep. Conversely, tae kwon do fighters, with much more fluid hip motion, kicked high with roundhouse kicks, spun off to the side rather than straight back, and flipped their hips in quick turns the other way to shoot out high, powerful back kicks. Whereas martial arts contests had been back-and-forth contests, (at least for Japanese fighters still inthe lower black belt ranks), the Koreans turned the fighting ring into a battlefield, in which attacks could come from anywhere.
All four Korean men did very well, and Billy Hong made it as far as the semi-finals. He had been careful to behave well, and his incredible ability to sidestep, to come around with a turning kick faster than his Japanese opponent could come in and punch, had amazed onlookers. Within a day or two, the Koreans had knocked apart the claims that kicks had to be slower than punches and that spinning and turning kicks lost power as they traveled.
In the semi final match, Hong's opponent rushed straight towards him, and Billy Hong jumped into the air, jerked his hips over, and shot his leg into the man's face. It was a jump back kick that he'd used to smash roofing tiles and bricks. It hit like a piece of concrete on the end of a battering ram.
The kick threw the man over and knocked him to the ground. It had smashed his upper palate and knocked his teeth out in a hail of blood and debris. He went into shock and started having convulsions. Billy Hong, thinking he might just be lynched by the crowd, remembered his orders and knelt down by his opponent. He was terrified, but he calmly said, "You'll be all right, friend. You'll be all right." and patted the man's back. Second to his fear of being lynched was his fear that the judges would think he had a bad attitude and disqualify him.
The wounded man was taken to a hospital, and Hong's next scheduled opponent is said to have simply bowed out of the final rounds. "You win," he told the young Korean. And Billy Hong, barely twenty years old, had taken first place in a Japanese martial arts competition.
The team returned to Seoul Korea, and grateful admirers threw them a ticker tape parade. Years later, Billy Hong would tell us that he left Korea a nobody and returned a national hero. Tae kwon do had proved itself in its first contest of international competition. But Billy Hong had set his sights on a new conquest. He wanted to bring tae kwon do to the United States. It took another two years, but in 1964 he secured the necessary papers, located a former US Army officer who had befriended him during the war, and settled in Anderson South Carolina where he enrolled in college.
Nobody in South Carolina had ever heard of tae kwon do. The local martial arts culture was small and was dominated by American karate and judo. But Billy Hong, who had always felt tremendously indebted to the United States of America, was determined to enrich his new home with a strong and proud tradition of tae kwon do.
