Totally Tae Kwon Do Magazine - Issue 17 - Usadojo

Coming Home: Training With
The ITF In South Korea
My original Taekwondo club was, in a word,
traditional. The etiquette and behavior
rules were as entrenched and developed
as the sequence of steps and techniques
in the patterns we performed. All black
belts were addressed as ‘Sabumnim’ or
referred to by their surname. As black belts,
we were invited to
weekend training
sessions only open to
us, not all grades. One
of the points of
etiquette was to write
a letter to our
instructor if we were
going to be absent
from these classes for
any length of time.
This is how, when I
decided to move to
South Korea, I found
myself having a
meeting with my
Senior Instructor and
Club Instructor,
explaining my
motivations in moving
to Korea.
Like a lot of students,
one of the main
reasons I wanted to visit South Korea was
to experience some traditional Taekwondo
training in the homeland of all things
taekwondo. I never realized how hard
trying to find a new dojang would be. My
experiences here in South Korea have
been, in a word, different. After trying my
hand in several different dojangs, and
several different styles, I finally found
somewhere that felt like home. The
etiquette may not be as entrenched, and
By Jay Boyle
the atmosphere is definitely more relaxed,
but I still feel like this dojang is right for me.
It took me a long time to find, but that is
because schools like this are so rare in
Korea. I’m not talking about quality, or the
ability of an instructor to speak English, or
even a friendly club atmosphere. All of
these things can be
found in dojangs all
around the country. No,
my new ‘home’ was
down to one thing –
my style. ITF
Taekwondo.
It may seem strange to
many readers to think
that ITF taekwondo,
the art developed by
Gen. Choi and taught
to the 29 th Infantry
Division, made famous
in hand to hand battles
during the Vietnam
War, and taught to
thousands of students
in hundreds of
countries is so hard to
find in its own
homeland. But its true
– in the city of Seoul,
home to over ten million Koreans, and
probably thousands of WTF dojangs, has
one, and only one, ITF dojang.
It was by pure luck that I stumbled across it,
but I am so glad I did. Not only is this the
only ITF dojang here in Seoul, but it is also
ran, and taught, by Master Kim Hoon, 4 th
Degree ITF Taekwondo, ex-Korean Tiger
International Demonstration Squad
member and Secretary General to the
Totally Tae Kwon Do - 31