Taekwondo

T’ae Kyone, the ancient name of Taekwon-Do, was as old as the history of the Hwarangdo. There was a primitive activity known as T’ae Kyone in the Silla Dynasty about 1,300 years ago.

Originally, Silla possessed the smallest territory when the ancient Korea was divided into three kingdoms, and she had to meet constant invasions from Koguryo in the north and Baekchae in the west.

From the time 500 A.D. Koguryo became so strong that it made Silla untenable. Therefore King Chin-Hung at his 37^th year of reign called up the strong and patriotic youths throughout the country and formed a strong organization called Hwarang-do (a kind of military organization) to meet the national crisis.

This group respected the royalty, honour and spirit of the warrior whale they enjoyed poems, music and morality, and traveled to noted mountains and big rivers with the purpose of spirit-body training. Consequently, General Kim Yu-Sin, the leader of the Hwarang-Do, unified all the territories in 668 A.D. According to Mr. Song Duk-K, who was one of the veterans of T’ae-Kyon at the end of the Yi Dynasty this art had been developed and taken shape, but unfortunately the trend of the thought humiliates the art of valor while it encouraged the literary arts during the Yi Dynasty (1393-1910 A.D.) and T’ae-Kyon could barely maintain its existence having no chance to further its progress from the original type of foot technique.

During the Japanese Occupation, after the Yi Dynasty, the hand technique was introduced from both China and Japan to this traditional art enabling the hand and foot techniques to be combined into one body under various names such as Tang-Su, Kong-Su, Karate, Kwon-pop, T’ae-Su, etc. Soon after the liberation in 1945, there was a movement to find the real name of this art. In 1955 a special board of Taekwon-Do masters, historians and prominent leaders was formed to solve this problem.

In 1955, at the session for naming, the term worded in “Tae” and “Qwon” which submitted was chosen unanimously among many other ballots.

The reasons behind the selection are follows:

This term had close connection with the old name Tae-Kyon both in pronunciation and meaning.
It was appreciated as a more relevant name to visualize the fact that this art employs combined techniques of both foot and hand, than such term as Tang-Su (Chinese-hand) or Karate (empty-hand) which implies the hand technique only.

This is a brief history of Taekwon-Do which is widely called and practiced in many parts of the world today.