Talk:Haidong Gumdo
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Haidong Gumdo is now practiced internationally in more than 100 nations, with competitions, demonstrations, and seminars/instruction at the international, national, and local levels. Therefore, with such a wide range of interest and a growing name recognition, it makes sense to have a separate article within Wikipedia on this martial art.
The word 'Kumdo' in Korean refers to any sword art. In practical usage, however, it is most closely associated with a particular school of martial sword art, namely, Daehan Kumdo. Daehan Kumdo is a Korean martial art identical to Japanese kendo. In fact, the Korean Kumdo Association (the Korean HQ for Daehan Kumdo) is a member in good standing of the International Kendo Federation, the international governing body for Japanese kendo sport fencing.
While Daehan Kumdo is identical to Japanese kendo, the only thing Haidong Gumdo and Daehan Kumdo have in common is that they both use something related to swords. Daehan Kumdo practices sparring and one-on-one sport fencing in full traditional armor, using a long staff made of four bamboo staves lashed together. Haidong Gumdo uses a wooden sword or live blade sword shorter in length than the Daehan Kumdo bamboo staff, emphasizes battlefield tactics and techniques, makes use of long forms, and practices live-blade cutting of bamboo and rolled mat targets. The two arts have separate histories, differing purposes, differing techniques, separate organizational structures, and unique lineages.
Merging all Korean sword arts (everything ever called 'kumdo') into one article under a name commonly associated only with Japanese kendo would create confusion and lose much of the detail on the many other sword arts native to Korea. I recommend that articles be maintained separately under the headings 'Kumdo' and 'Haidong Gumdo', and that the article on kumdo include a 'see also' link to the 'Haidong Gumdo' article.
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Haidoing gumdo is quackery. It has no similarity to kumdo (which is the Korean adaption of Japanese kendo).
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It makes sense to have one entry for Kumdo that covers all the different schools of Kumdo in Korea (and there are many). However, the current article on Kumdo is very badly written with numerous spelling and grammatical errors. In addition, there is obviously some bias in the writing. I’m not 100% clear on how this web site works, but that particular entry is considerably below the quality of most of the other articles on this site.
As for whether Haidong Gumdo is distinct from Kendo or Japanese derived versions of Kumdo, its pedagogical approach is certainly different (I have a first dan black belt in Haidong Kumdo). Haidong Kumdo does not use armor to protect its students during training. Some see this as a draw back because sparring is restrained and unrealistic. It also places greater emphasis on dodging (some of which can be quite acrobatic, including tumbles, rolls and cartwheels) and uses wider circular moves than Kendo, which seems more linear to me. I was also taught basic Hapkido, taekwondo and the use of nunchuks in my training, but that may have just reflected my sahbamnim's preferences.
As for origins, I doubt Kumdo was the origin of Kendo. I was told Haidong Kumdo was a blending of Chinese and Japanese sword fighting styles. I have no Idea if that is true or not. It would be nice if someone historically knowledgeable and neutral would comment on this. The bad blood between Korea and Japan make it unlikely that either Korean or Japanese experts will be able to provide this web site with neutral, scholarly reports on the topic.
As for Haidong Gumdo being quackery because it is not the same as Kendo, that is not logical. That's like saying Thai kick boxing or Taekwondo are quackery because they are not karate.
[edit] Spelling errors in the name of this article
As of 1987, there were 32 Romanization proposals published in English articles according to an academic source that I have lost since. Not one of those 32 Romanization proposals included a rendering of "u" for the vowel in "검." This rendering is what has been called the American-enlisted-man's-back-of-the-envelope Romanization as a slap against the ignorance of international spelling conventions that is reflected. Wikipedia guidelines indicate a preference for the Revised Romanization or the McCune-Reischauer Romanization. Without getting into the shortcomings of the Revised Romanization - such as its rendering of this vowel as a historical mistake based on an erroneous assumption about the French spelling of 서울 as se-oul (reported in an academic journal edited by David McCann) - it is very clear that the rendering "Gumdo" cannot be used, even if it is favored by certain Korean Komdo teachers in the U.S. who have no knowledge of these issues and give an "off the top of the head" rendering based on phonology idiosyncratic to American English. This is apparently also the source of the non-standard spelling "ai" in "Haidong" instead of "ae" ("Haedong").
The page should be moved and re-directs created. -DoctorW 01:33, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
- Wikipedia convention for proper names has always been to use what the person or organization prefers. The Daehan Haidong Gumdo Federation uses this one. It's a misleading romanization for anyone familiar with MR or RR, I agree. But that's what they use, so that's what we use.
- Likewise, geomdo/kǒmdo is under kumdo because it's entered into common use in the west that way. As I mentioned on the talk page for kumdo, if you want to see "u" used for "ㅓ", open up any Korean restaurant menu, or look at the badges of any Hyundai (Hyeondae/Hyǒndae).
- The body of the article was riddled with mixed or nonstandard romanizations, so I've done my best to bring them in line with RR, but there may be some mistakes since I couldn't find all the terms in their original hangeul. — AKADriver ☎ 22:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Do Not Merge
I am currently a student in Kumdo, and Haidong Kumdo and Kumdo are two completely different things. All because both are korean based and have kumdo in both of them means they are the same.
Merging Haedong Kumdo and Kumdo would be quite confusing I think. They're about as different as Kenjutsu is to Kendo. Mainly, Haedong is not a sport.
