A Killing Art by Alex Gillis

Author:Alex Gillis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press

Chapter 10: The Exiles

The fifth element that is essential for the Tae Kwon Doist is accuracy in throwing kicks and blows. In a time of crisis you get one chance. If you miss, you cannot step back . . .

– Duk-Sung Son, founding member of Tae Kwon Do [83]

Choi and Nam transferred the headquarters of their Tae Kwon Do organization to Toronto, Ontario, but Choi left behind his family and arrived in Canada with no money, no reputation, and no power. Why Canada? It was located between Europe and South America, where Choi wanted Tae Kwon Do to expand; Jong-Soo Park, one of his best pioneers, lived here and ran a growing network of gyms that were generating world champions in sparring. But more importantly, Canada was a relatively neutral country politically: a Canadian passport would give him access to both communist and non-communist countries. Choi had well-hidden hopes to introduce Tae Kwon Do to communist nations.

But adapting to a culture where Money meant more than Position — and Honour had a low exchange rate — was a fall for a man who had once led 100,000 soldiers. He had told people that he used two names: one was “Choi Hong-Hi,” given by his father, and the other, “Tae Kwon Do,” given by heaven — but how could he become immortal in a Canadian suburb, a cultural wasteland by his standards (and not a kisaeng house in sight)?

His martial art saved him once again. On the way to Canada, he and Nam had stopped in Hong Kong to pick up Choi's newly published Tae Kwon Do book — yet another book — which contained 518 pages of old and new techniques. It featured Nam Tae-hi and Jong-Soo Park on the cover and finally proved that Choi and his men had developed techniques that were different from Karate. An example of Choi's obsessive detailing was “Finger Belly,” which referred to the inside part of one's hand, between the palm and the fingertips, used to support a back fist in certain strikes. He had plucked the name “Finger Belly” from a dream. [84]

A more dramatic addition was Choi's section about T'aekkyon, an innovation that distinguished Tae Kwon Do from Karate. He had continued claiming that Tae Kwon Do rested on Korea's ancient art of T'aekkyon, a lie repeated so many times by so many people that most believed that Tae Kwon Do was thousands of years old. It was only natural that Choi finally got around to adding T'aekkyon techniques to Tae Kwon Do. He entitled them “Foot Technique Sparring” (Jokgi Daeryon) in the 1972 book, and, in later books, simply “Foot Sparring” (Bal Matsogi). Most of the T'aekkyon techniques required extraordinary leg agility and power. One of the easier moves involved a defender kicking the ankle of an attacking leg in mid-air and immediately kicking the attacker's head with the same leg, a one-two move that forces the leg to be as fast as a punch. [85] Choi's T'aekkyon techniques mimicked

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