Taekwon-Do Masters, Interviews, and Late Nights

A renowned scholar of Taekwon-Do history, Master George Vitale (8th Dan), visited Seoul last week to conduct a series of interviews. Master George is involved with a documentary in the making by director Luan Van Le, so both he and Mr. Van Le spent time in Seoul last week. On Thursday evening they booked a shoot with the chief ITF dojang where I practice Taekwon-Do in Seoul. Since they did not know where it is, or how to navigate the Seoul transportation system – especially at peak hours – I went to meet them at their hotel and escort them to the dojang. Footage was taken of the students training, of some of us doing patterns, and so on. Throwing techniques are a neglected element in Taekwon-Do, even though it is part of the system. Seeing that it is so uncommon to find someone adapt in throwing skills they actually requested me to demonstrate some throws. So far they have over 200 hours of footage that need to be reduced into a two hour film, so we will have to see if my throwing techniques will feature at all. After the training Master Vitale interviewed our instructor Mr. Kim Hoon, as well as myself and assistant instructor Anna. Many questions revolved around the prejudice experienced by ITF Taekwon-Do practitioners in a WTF-dominated country. There is an erroneous stigma that ITF is somehow North Korean. This is, of course, a false assumption. ITF Taekwon-Do started in South Korea and grew into an international system – it is as little (North) Korean as cricket is British. The interviews continued so late that by the time I went home the subway had closed and all the busses had stopped commuting so I had to take a taxi.

On Saturday evening I met up with Master Vitale, Mr. Van Le, and another friend. We had a nice evening discussing Taekwon-Do and its very intriguing history. Again, by the time the socializing came to an end it was again too late to take the public transportation back. So instead I stayed over in a motel.