The Dojang

So far the course has followed organisations and rules. This chapter goes inside the training hall (the dojang) to look at what the sources say about its setting, the uniform and belt, and the ideas taught there: the tenets, the oath, the "theory of power" and the appeal to the Hwarang of ancient Silla. The question to keep asking is the one from Chapter 1: for each idea, who wrote it, when, and what does the record show about where it came from?

The Hall, the Uniform, the Belt

The hall. The Taekwondo article says "the school or place where instruction is given is called a dojang" (도장; 道場). The Dojang article lists the Korean dojang among "similar cultural establishments" and says this type of school "is fairly similar to the Japanese variety". The word is the Korean reading of the same characters as the Japanese dōjō, which the article says "originates from Buddhism" and means literally "place of the Way". The article's detailed customs (shoes not worn, ritual cleaning, a front wall called the shomen with a shrine or flowers) are described for Japanese halls; I do not apply them to taekwondo.

The uniform. The Dobok article says dobok is "the uniform worn by practitioners of Korean martial arts", do meaning "way" and bok "clothing", and that it "came from the Japanese keikogi/dōgi, used in Japanese martial arts, such as judo". It continues:

• The pants and sleeves "are wider and longer than the traditional Japanese keikogi", and so practitioners "often wear a dobok modeled after the Korean hanbok".
• WTF-style doboks "usually have v-neck jackets, tailored after the design of the hanbok"; traditional taekwondo practitioners "may wear doboks that are identical or very similar to keikogi, with a cross-over jacket front"; ITF-style practitioners "typically wear a newer design with a vertically closing jacket front".
• Colours: "white and black are the most common".

The belt. The article says the belt (tti) denotes rank: coloured belts for geup-holders and black for dan-holders, with the order "different from school to school" (a white first belt is most common, followed by "yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, red, brown, and then black"). That matches Chapter 5's finding that ranks are "not standardized". The belt colour sequence itself is an example of something the sources describe as varying, with no historical origin given in the articles read.

The Tenets and the Oath

The Taekwondo article opens its Philosophy section with the statement that "different styles of Taekwondo adopt different philosophical underpinnings". It gives Choi Hong-hi's as the first example: "the Five Tenets of Taekwondo":

They are "further articulated in a taekwondo oath, also authored by Choi": to observe the tenets, respect the instructor and seniors, never misuse taekwondo, "be a champion of freedom and justice" and "build a more peaceful world". The article adds that "modern ITF organizations have continued to update and expand upon this philosophy". So here the authorship is documented: the article names Choi as the author of both. It does not give the year.

World Taekwondo's and the Kukkiwon's Account

The article says that the WTF (now WT) "also refers to the commandments of the Hwarang", and "like the ITF philosophy, it centers on the development of a peaceful society as one of the overarching goals". Its stated philosophy is that this goal "can be furthered by adoption of the Hwarang spirit, by behaving rationally ('education in accordance with the reason of heaven'), and by recognition of the philosophies embodied in the taegeuk (the yin and the yang, i.e., 'the unity of opposites') and the sam taegeuk (understanding change in the world as the interactions of the heavens, the Earth, and Man)". It adds that "the philosophical position articulated by the Kukkiwon is likewise based on the Hwarang tradition". The WT account has no named author in the article; it is an institutional statement.

Choi's Theory of Power

The article says that the emphasis on speed in taekwondo "has its origins in analyses undertaken by Choi Hong-hi", known to ITF practitioners as "Choi's Theory of Power". Choi "based his understanding of power on biomechanics and Newtonian physics as well as Chinese martial arts", and the article's example is that kinetic energy "increases quadratically with the speed of the strike, but increases only linearly with the mass". It lists the "components": reaction force, concentration, equilibrium, breath control, mass and speed. It also describes a "relax/strike" principle, which "it is believed" increases power, and a "sine wave" technique, which the styles section says "some ITF schools adopt, while others do not". I describe these only as named ideas with an author and an organisation that teaches them. The article does not say how the theory was tested, and I give no technique instruction.

The Hwarang Referent: What the Record Shows

Both the ITF (as the Taekwondo article reads) and WT/Kukkiwon accounts cite the Hwarang. The Hwarang article says they were "an elite warrior group of male youth in Silla" from "the mid 6th century" to "the early 10th century", with their information found "mainly in the historiographical works Samguk sagi (1145) and Samguk yusa (c. 1285)". Several points from that article bear on how to read the reference:

• Late knowledge. The article says "the history of the hwarang was not widely known until after the National Liberation Day of Korea in 1945, after which the hwarang became elevated to symbolic importance". That is the same date as the first kwans.
• Lost primary sources. The surviving works "cite primary sources no longer existent". The article reports that "in the late 1980s, an alleged Hwarang Segi manuscript was discovered in Gimhae", and that the scholar Richard McBride "regards it as a forgery".
• The "Five Commandments". The article says the monk Won Gwang composed the Sesok-ogye ("Five Commandments for Secular Life") for two youths, and that "these have since been attributed as a guiding ethos for the Hwarang". They are: loyalty to one's lord; love and respect for parents; trust among friends; never retreat in battle; never take a life without a just cause.
• A debated martial role. Chapter 2's Korean martial arts article says "surviving historical sources do not describe a formalized martial arts system" for the Hwarang. The Hwarang article quotes the historian Vladimir Tikhonov's description of them as "sweet young men" who served in the military because of the era's "strict military laws and traditions".

Documented, Attributed, Later

Reading Rules From This Chapter

1. Find the author. A tenet with a named author (Choi) is a different kind of fact from a philosophy attributed to an institution or to "tradition".
2. "Based on tradition" asks for a chain. When an old group is cited, check what is known of it, when it became known, and what survives of its teaching.
3. Compare the lists. Two sets of five can share a number and a spirit and still be different content.
4. Silence on etiquette is a gap. Do not fill in rituals from the Japanese dōjō or from memory.

Exercises

Next chapter: Claims and Controversies, which gathers the disputes met along the way (origin stories, the karate-influence argument, rule and scoring disputes) and reports each as reported, with owners.