‘Karate’ Suits Enrage Korean Taekwondo Lovers
The Chosun Ilbo reports that some “patriotic” Koreans are outraged that a Taekwondo park has included a picture of children wearing Taekwondo suits that look dangerously similar to a Karate suits:
The first glimmer of controversy appears to be a posting on the website of the North Jeolla provincial government titled, “Brochure for the Taekwondo park, a shame.” There, a devotee of the Korean martial art pointed out, “The models wear karate suits, their belts are tied improperly, and what is worse, there is no green belt in Taekwondo. This brochure is a waste of money. How could you administer the Taekwondo park without being able to distinguish the Taekwondo suit from the karate suit. Will you promote the spirit and culture of Korea in a brochure with kimono-clad models?”
In the brochure, five foreign girls and boys are seen smiling, wearing white suits with belts in red, violet, green, orange and yellow. The suit does indeed look like those worn for the traditional martial art of Korea’s arch-rival Japan: the top is a jacket rather than a pullover, and the neckline is just white, unlike that of the original Taekwondo suit, which is black or red or both. But the suit is in fact a new design adopted in hopes of improving the popularity of the sport.
Still, the “improved” suit is so similar to a karate suit as to smack of capitulation. Now there are calls for proper standards for Taekwondo suits to be drawn up.
Oh yes, they need to switch back to the other Taekwondo suits. The 0.00001% of people who can tell the difference between traditional Taekwondo suits and karate suits must be able to look at that brochure and feel happy that the children are wearing sufficiently un-Japanese suits!!
[via Zero]
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TO THE DEATH!!!11
Having studied Taekwondo as a youngster, I always thought Taekwondo’s “pullover” was superior – first, it doesn’t come open; second, it tends to be lighter-weight, which is a bonus when you’re sweating your ass off.
I could have sworn we had a green belt at some point, though.
I took Taekwondo as well. The belts are White, yellow tip, yellow, blue tip, blue, brown tip, brow, red tip, red, black tip, black.
Different taekwondo schools have different colored belts for students below black belt. My school has green belts for students between orange and blue. We also have a green blet with a blue stripe, but not an orange belt with a green stripe. I’ve read about some schools that have camo-colored belts. Some day, someone might try to standardized student ciriculum, but at present even attempts to standardize black belt ciriculum is full of controversy.
This is so ridiculous!
Originally Taekwondo was imitated Shotokan-ryu Karate and founded in post war.
Actually the founder of Taekwondo had done Shotokan-ryu Karate for a long time in Japan.
But Korean have been telling lies all over the world that Taekwondo is origin of Karate.
When I took taekwondo lessons as a kid in the 90s, we wore uniforms that looked exactly like that, and we also had a green belt.
http://www.ataonline.com/taekwondo/belts/index.asp
4 Words: WHO GIVES A SHIT!
people with too much time on their hands.
Well, TKD is modern version of combined MA of Taekkyon and Kyokushin Karate.
Kyokushin Karate founder was the famous Mas Oyama (Korean went Japan during post war era and took Japanese name; Korean name: Choi Yeong-eui).
So Karate is not 100% owned by Japanese, Coz, Karate came from one of Bul-do (Budaism’s MA – Zen or Son buddaism). Is one of the prefered un-armed combat style and TKD took it from there.
TKD is divided into TKD I & II; TKD I was original TKD which is very similar to Kyokushin Karate and another modern Korean MA called Hapkido. TKD II version is more sporty type purely developed for Olympic or leisure style.
Back to the TKD uniform; the current TKD uniform was only developed very recently; made for sport & olympic. The kids wearing above are original TKD I style.
I wored that during my TKD days back in early 1980s. The color of belts should only about four (White – Blue – Red – Black), TKD I added couple of more color Yellow & Green, not too sure about Brown.
There is another style of TKD uniform, which just looks like tracksuit – I guess this version is for sport & training.
Yeah there is a well deserved uproar. TKD isn’t karate. Yes the sports are similar, but… Do baseball players wear cricket uniforms while promoting baseball? Do football players (Real men’s kind of football, not soccer) wear rugby uniforms to promote football? No. Do hockey players (Again, the real kind, not field hockey) wear lacrosse jerseys to promote their sport?
No. All those sports are closely related to eachother and are similar.
And besides, why give credence to the second most practiced martial art when you’re promoting the first most practiced martial art?
As the article states, they are wearing a new type of TKD uniform, supposedly because the martial art needs a popularity boost.
What is the most practied martial art? These pages claim it’s judo:
http://www.dcmetroboxing.com/
http://www.jcymca.org/programs/martialarts.php
http://www.usjudo.org/aboutjudo.asp
The main thing here is that the uniforms aren’t V-neck. If they were, no one would have a problem.
That being said, I wore a karate style gi for 5 years of Taekwondo, and no one complained.