Choi Hong Hi

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Choi Hong Hi
Hangul:	최홍희
Hanja:	崔泓熙
Revised Romanization:	Choe Hong-hui
McCune-Reischauer:	Ch'oe Hong-hŭi

Choi Hong Hi (November 9, 1918 - June 15, 2002) was a South Korean army general founder of Taekwondo. As a retired Major-General, he was his country's first ambassador to Malaysia. He later fled the country and eventually settled in Canada. While he did make several visits to North Korea, he never lived there, returning there permanently only when he was about to pass away. His claim as founder of Taekwondo is disputed by the vast majority of senior Taekwondo masters, although there is no denying that he coined to term "Taekwon-Do" and was at the forefront of the movement to unify the various Kwans.

General Choi was born in the Hwa Dae Myong Chun District of what was to be North Korea during the Japanese Colonial Period and died in P'yŏngyang, the North Korean capital. During his adult life, however, Choi lived in Japan, South Korea, and Canada gaining the rank of "Major-General" during his career in the South Korean army.

As a boy he was educated in Korea under the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. At that time, many of the traditions of the Korean people were suppressed by the Japanese, including the country's ancient martial arts, which were and still are renowned for the dynamic kicking techniques that are taught in them. Choi Hong Hi claims he was trained in the Korean martial art of Taekyonin secret. However, the Korea Taekkyon Association states these claims were false. It should be noted, however, that Taekkyon developed as both a game and a martial art. Yung Ouyang points out (in "The Elevation of Taekkyon from Folk Game to Martial Art" in Journal of Asian Martial Arts, vol. 6, no. 4) that Taekkyon's origins as a game means that the lack of any sort of lineage records before the recent past is to be completely expected. "Why would anyone want to keep track of who learned from whom how to play a game that was looked down upon anyway? ... Such record keeping is counter-intuitive since if the Japanese had ever gotten hold of such records, the consequences would have been disastrous." Additionally, it was actually the influence of Japanese martial arts on Koreans that can account for the great "concern for lineage and legitimacy. Those who were able to learn formally from masters and had their names in records were probably few in number. The folk nature of taekkyon points to its indigenousness. Obsessiveness with legitimacy through lineage points to something that is foreign and desires exclusivity." As such, the fact that there is no corroboration of Gen. Choi's claim from the Korea Taekkyon Association (as well as Hwang Kee and others) is not surprising. What is surprising is that the organization would even make a claim when there is such a derth of records to begin with.

When he became older he went to Japan to study calligraphy. Choi had been studying calligraphy and Taek Kyon in Korea under Han Il Dong and upon arrival in Japan he started to study Shotokan Karate as a student of a Korean named Kim Hyun-soo, and after two years of intensive training he was presented with a first Dan Black Belt in Shotokan. He then went into Tokyo University where he studied under Master Gichin Funakoshi, founder of Shotokan, and gained his second Dan. Around this time, he started teaching, and became an instructor at the Tokyo YMCA. (there are pictures of Gen. Choi as a student at the main Shotokan dojo when he was a student in Japan which have been published in "Taekwon-Do Times" magazine). Conscripted into the Japanese army in 1943, he was posted to Pyongyang where he became involved in the Korean Independence Movement, resulting in his imprisonment. Wanting to maintain he good physical and mental health during his imprisionment, he practiced karate, alone at first, then by teaching it to the staff of the prison and the other prisoners. Until his liberation at the end of the war he practiced and developed much of the martial art.

Becoming an officer in the new Korean Army after the end of the war, he continued to teach his martial art to his soliders as well as to American soldiers serving in Korea.

His beliefs and his vision of a different approach to teaching martial arts led General Choi to combine elements of Taek Kyon and Karate techniques to develop a modern martial art. He called it TaeKwonDo, which means "the way of the feet and the hands", and this name was offically adopted on Apirl 11th, 1955.^[1]

In 1959, General Choi was named President of the Korean Tae Kwon Do association. Seven years later, on March 22nd 1966, he created the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF), As the Founder of Tae Kwon Do and the President of the ITF, he had the ability to share his art with students everywhere.

After a life dedicated to the development of Tae Kwon Do, a modern martial art based on traditional values, philosophy, and training, General Choi, died of cancer on June 15th, 2002, in the country of his birth.