Hong-Hi Choi founded the Odokwan in 1953, supported by Tae-Hi Nam. The new kwan was based upon the principles used by the Ch'ongdokwan (which Choi also commanded in late 1954). After Choi fell into disfavor in the R.O.K. in the mid-1970s, official histories of the World Taekwondo Federation (W.T.F.) began giving Tae-Hi Nam -- whom Choi called "his righthand man in 1954" -- sole credit for the founding of the Odokwan.
Dakin BurdickHong-Hi Choi founded the Odokwan in 1953, supported by Tae-Hi Nam. The new kwan was based upon the principles used by the Ch'ongdokwan (which Choi also commanded in late 1954). After Choi fell into disfavor in the R.O.K. in the mid-1970s, official histories of the World Taekwondo Federation (W.T.F.) began giving Tae-Hi Nam -- whom Choi called "his righthand man in 1954" -- sole credit for the founding of the Odokwan.
Kee Hwang, founder of the Mudokkwan, remained the most visible opponent of the K.T.A., and as a result he was often harrassed by K.T.A. supporters.
The taekwondo movement began in 1955, when a conference of masters assembled on Apr. 11 to again attempt to unify kongsudo. According to both Choi and Duk-Sung Son, the conference chose the name of taekwondo ("smashing-kick fist way"). Aside from Maj.-Gen. Choi, the other members of the board were Hwa-Chung Yoo, Duk-Sung Son, Gen. hyung-Kun Lee, Kyun-Kyu Cho, Sen. Dae-Chun Chung, Chang-Won Han, Kyung-Rok Chang, Soon-Ho Hong, Kwang-Rae Ko, and Jong-Myung Hyun. Both Son and Choi claim credit for invention of the name t'aekwondo. Choi claims he chose the name because of its similarity to t'aeggyon, and because the names tangsudo and kongsudo "connoted Chinese or Japanese martial arts." Son, on the other hand, claims that he was "directly responsible for searching out and popularizing the original name of Tae Kwon Do." Choi claims the name was chosen on Apr. 11, 1955, while Son claims it was chosen at the first meeting of the Ch'ongdokwan board of directors on Dec. 19, 1955.
Despite the evidence of Choi and Son, it is this author's belief that taekwondo was originally called "t'aesudo" ("smashing-kick hand way"). Both Kee Hwang and Pyong-Chik Ro (through Frankovich), as well as Kim Soo (through the Dussaults) give "t'aesudo" as the early name for the art that came to be taekwondo. Jong-Rok Kim of the Kukkiwon also supports this view by stating that the Korean Taekwondo Association (K.T.A.) was originally "the Tae Soo Do Association." Also, Shipley recalls that "The earliest organization that I personally experienced using this name [taekwondo] was the Chongdo-Kwan association around 1962 (they had previously gone under kong soo do)." Since the head instructor of the Ch'ongdokwan was Duk-Sung Son, his use of the name "kongsudo" seven years after he supposedly introduced taekwondo is paradoxical. For this reason, "t'aesudo" will be used instead of taekwondo during the discussion of the next few years, even though Choi and Son (both important authorities of the era) do not acknowledge the use of "t'aesudo."
Contention among the kwans continued for several years following the 1955 meeting. For a time, Kee Hwang's Korean Tangsudo Association was quite successful and Hwang's efforts to connect tangsudo with the older art of subak seemed to have paid off. After a July 1959 meeting, the Korean Kongsudo Association and the Korean Tangsudo Association merged to form the Subakdo Association, with the aim of petitioning the Korean Amateur Sports Association (K.A.S.A.) for membership. They hoped that renewed solidarity would win admittance, since the Subakdo Association "contained all of the original kwans in one united group." K.A.S.A. rejected their petition.
After Hwang's failure, Gen. Choi emerged as the new leader of Korean karate-do. His style of t'aesudo derived much of its power through its association with the military. All Korean men were required to serve three years in the military, and the military taught t'aesudo, not tangsudo. The Korean T'aesudo Association (K.T.A.) was founded in 1959, with the help of Gen. Choi. The Subakdo Association, after its rejection by K.A.S.A., turned to Hong-Hi Choi for political support. A conference between the two groups took place in Sept. 1959, which resulted in the creation of the new organization. When Hee-Il Cho (b. 1940) joined the army in 1961 as a fourth dan in tangsudo, he became a t'aesudo instructor and learned the Ch'ang Hon forms designed by Gen. Choi. As a result, he is today known as one of the foremost t'aekwondo instructors. The influence of the military had always been quite strong in the martial arts community, and Choi reaped the benefits of that influence. In addition, the impact of the R.O.K. military was about to become even stronger.
On May 15, 1961, a military coup d'etat ousted the Second Republic and placed Gen. Chung-Hee Park in charge of South Korea. At the end of 1962, Park became the President of the Third Republic and he was re-elected in 1967 & 1971. In 1972, he dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the constitution. He then expanded his powers and was elected President of the Fourth Republic at the end of the year. He was re-elected in Dec. 1978, but was assassinated in 1979 by the head of his own intelligence agency. Until then, Park reigned as a dictator over the R.O.K. for eighteen years, and his military background had an enormous impact upon t'aekwondo's development.
Following the coup d'etat, the K.T.A. met on Sept. 14, 1961, to elect Gen. Hong-Hi Choi as its new president, since Choi's support of the coup had garnered him much influence with the new military government. Kee Hwang and Yon-Kue Pyang (founder of the Ch'idokwan) protested the decision and left the organization permanently. The Ch'ongdokwan, which was by then "the largest civilian gym in Korea," also fought unification under the K.T.A., instead supporting Kee Hwang's organization, the Korean Subakdo Association.
Resistance proved futile. The K.T.A. became an affiliate of the K.A.S.A. on June 25, 1962 and in January, 1964, it joined the Korean Athletic Association. On Oct. 24, 1962, t'aesudo also became an official event in the forty-third annual National Games of the R.O.K., although the K.T.A. did not establish match rules until Nov. 3 (these rules would be amended four times by 1967). Many instructors rejoined the K.T.A. in 1962 when the K.T.A. decided to retest all black belts to establish national standards, an action that seemed ominous given the obvious support of the Park government.
Kee Hwang, founder of the Mudokkwan, remained the most visible opponent of the K.T.A., and as a result he was often harrassed by K.T.A. supporters. The K.T.A. attempted to have the Mudokkwan's charter with the Ministry of Education revoked, but Hwang won the case under the Korean Supreme Court. According to Robert Shipley, Hwang's house was also "partially burned by 'persons unknown'" as a result of his resistance to the t'aesudo movement. Hwang eventually moved to the U.S. (in May, 1974), where he continued to teach tangsudo.
National unification of t'aesudo was accompanied by a drive for its internationalization. T'aesudo demonstration teams visited South Vietnam and Taiwan in 1959, and the art was then established in the United States (1959), South Vietnam (1962), Thailand (1962-3), Malaysia (1962), Hong Kong (1962-3), Canada (1964), Singapore (1964), West Germany (1964), Italy (1965), Turkey (1965), and the United Arab Emirates (1965). Hong-Hi Choi, then a retired two-star general and ambassador to Malaysia, had himself introduced t'aesudo to Malaysia in 1962.
Internationalization efforts became even more fervent after the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. On Aug. 5, 1965, the K.T.A. was renamed the Korean Taekwondo Association and in that same year, Hong-Hi Choi led a "Good-Will Mission of Taekwondo" on a tour of fourteen countries. The Tokyo games also inspired Gwan-Sik Min, President of K.A.S.A., in 1966 to propose that a training centre be built to prepare Korean athletes for international competition. President Park assented. In response, the International Taekwon-Do Federation (I.T.F.) was founded on Mar. 22, 1966, with Hong-Hi Choi appointed as president of the new organization. Under the I.T.F., taekwondo was spread to the Netherlands (1966), Taiwan (1967), the United Kingdom (1967), and elsewhere. 1967 marks the apex of Gen. Choi's career in Korea, since it was in that year that he invited Masutatsu Oyama, by then one of the most famous Karateka in Japan, to come to Seoul to discuss eventually changing Oyama's Kyokushinkai karate-do to taekwondo.
Taekwondo continued to gain in importance in Korea in the 1970s. Construction of the Kukkiwon, the Seoul headquarters of the taekwondo, began on Nov. 19, 1971, and the building was inaugurated on Nov. 30, 1972. On Feb. 14, 1972, taekwondo became a part of the official curriculum of Korea's primary schools. It entered the middle school curricula on Aug. 31 and on Dec. 5, the National High School and Middle School Taekwondo Federation was established, followed by the National Collegiate Taekwondo Federation on Dec. 28, 1972.
A schism between Hong-Hi Choi and the K.T.A. appeared in 1973. Choi planned to move to Toronto in 1974, and take the I.T.F. headquarters with him. Young-Wun Kim (President of the K.T.A.) was dismayed by this move, because he believed that the international headquarters of taekwondo should remain in Korea. As a result, Kim severed the K.T.A.'s ties to the I.T.F. and supported the formation of a new organization, the World Taekwondo Federation (W.T.F.), which was founded during the first World Taekwondo Championships held at the Kukkiwon from May 25 to May 28, 1973. The first meeting of the W.T.F was on May 26, and the organization was officially established on the last day of the championships. Choi responded by having J.C. Kim host the I.T.F.'s World Taekwondo Championships in Montreal in 1974, marking his determination to compete with the W.T.F. in Seoul.
The distance between the I.T.F. and W.T.F. widened with the years. Hong-Hi Choi publicly denounced R.O.K. President Chung-Hee Park in September, 1977, claiming that that Park was "using Taekwondo for his political ends." Choi also made several peace overtures towards the D.P.R.K., and in 1981 he took a demonstration team of sixteen black belts to that country for ten days. While there, he met with not only his brother (whom he had not seen for more than twenty years) and one of his aunts, but also President Il-Sung Kim, who gave such audiences only on very rare occasions. Choi today is responsible for the spread of t'aekwondo to the D.P.R.K., and works for the re-unification of Korea. As a result of his work with North Korea, some South Koreans regard him as a traitor.
A History of Modern Taekwondo Part 1
The rise of Taekwondo is an extraordinary tale. Founded only forty years ago, it has grown so vigorously that it has become one of the most popular martial arts in the world. During its formative years, Taekwondo was nearly indistinguishable from its parent art, Okinawan karate-do
These then, were the formative years of taekwondo, which began as kongsudo. Nearly identical to the Japanese karate-do learned during the occupation of Korea, kongsudo developed new nationalistic paradigms in the 1950s, including Kee Hwang's tangsudo and Hong-Hi Choi's taekwondo. Hwang tried to link tangsudo with the Chinese-influenced art of subak, while Choi tied t'aekwondo to the indigenous art of t'aeggyon. Both subak and t'aeggyon represented for many Koreans the purity of the land before the Japanese invasion. With the military coup of 1961, Choi's dream took precedence and by 1973, taekwondo had spread across the world and flowered into a unique kicking style.
Many Koreans dislike admitting their debt to the Chinese and Japanese martial arts, because they feel that their earlier dependence invalidates the current standing of taekwondo. This is not so. First, if taekwondo were invalidated by its debt to China, then so would be Okinawan kempo and Japanese karate-do, both of which likewise stem from Chinese quan-fa. Taekwondo’s position as an important martial art is secure. While it is true that taekwondo was once simply Korean karate-do, it has since evolved into a uniquely Korean form, under the guidance of the W.T.F. and other organizations. Secondly, much of the karate-do now practiced in the United States began as kongsudo. Atlee Chittim studied kongsudo in Korea in 1948 and joined the U.S. Karate Association when he returned home, eventually sponsoring entry of the "father of American taekwondo," Jhoon Rhee, into the United States in 1956. Another of Rhee's students, Allen Steen, is called a "pioneer" of "American karate" by John Corcoran, although Steen was trained in kongsudo. Steen's students have included such notables as Pat Burleson ("the 'grandfather' of open tournament fighting in America"), Skipper Mullins (an "American karate champion"), Fred Wren (another "American karate champion"), and Mike Anderson (an "American karate pioneer"). Ernest Lieb studied kongsudo under Il-Sup Chun, and went on to become the first chairman of Amateur Athletic Union (A.A.U.) Karate and then the President of the American Karate Association. It is obvious from all these examples that Korean instructors were largely responsible for the rise of karate-do in America, and therefore merit the respect of their fellow karateka. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, taekwondo’s meteoric rise to fame and its de facto position of prominence are themselves validations of its techniques.
Author Profile: Dakin Burdick
All material copyright of Dakin Burdick 1999.
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(through the Dussaults) give "t'aesudo" as the early name for the art that came to be taekwondo. Jong-Rok Kim of the Kukkiwon also supports this view by stating that the 
Following the coup d'etat, the K.T.A. met on Sept. 14, 1961, to elect Gen. Hong-Hi Choi as its new president, since Choi's support of the coup had garnered him much influence with the new military government. Kee Hwang and Yon-Kue Pyang (founder of the Ch'idokwan) protested the decision and left the organization permanently. The Ch'ongdokwan, which was by then "the largest civilian gym in Korea," also fought unification under the K.T.A., instead supporting Kee Hwang's organization, the Korean Subakdo Association. 
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