Shotokan International
If Taekwondo’s Kukkiwon, is all about the money in promotions, are other martial arts groups practicing it?
Kukkiwon is Taekwondo’s highest authority, I believe. Why the heck are they in it for the money? Aren’t they worried that their students might get a fake confidence in self-defense and actually get beaten up in a real fight? I mean, heck, yeah, I know Taekwondo isn’t much of a self-defense martial art to begin with compared to other fighting systems such as Krav Maga or even MMA, but someone who knows taekwondo would always have an advantage to some idiot who just throws instinct punches and doesn’t know how to kick. So WTF is wrong with the WTF?
And could the same money-laundering black belt thingy be said for other international martial arts groups such as the AIBA (Boxing authority), IJF (Judo authority), JKA (Shotokan Karate authority), IFMA (MUay THai authority), etc?
I know the other organizations I mentioned don’t have a belting system, but you get the point.
Black belt magazine did an article on this about fifteen years ago and it was pretty informative as well as pretty accurate in many things that had been happening in regards to TKD in this country during the 70s and 80s. Some of this I have also witnessed first hand like the sponsoring of a TKD Korean instructor being sponsored into this country from Korea and sold a TKD school that he turned into a diploma mill and eventually paid off along with obtaining his US citazenship. That instructor owns a couple of shopping centers now and is pretty well off from the money he has made from belt contracts, exhorbiant testing fees and just generally taking advantage of uneducated consumers. Along with this I particpated in 1976 in the AAU TKD championships which was to help determine the US Olympic team members and was only one of two non TKD indivduals to do that. Without the support of the AAU I and that other individual would not have been allowed to compete. Ten or so years later I was even asked if I was interested in meeting with a non Korean Olympic official involved with Olympic TKD to travel and meet with him to talk about my trouble in competing as simular problems were surfacing in his own country and in others that the WTF was attempting to excerpt control over and above that of the US Olympic Committee’s. This and the fact that some of the mavericks of TKD (who also are Korean) who don’t care for the WTF and I know personally and have heard some of their stories has convinced me long before now that it is just an agressive marketing and business plan to further TKD. By putting a studio in every large town and city, tying people to long term contracts, nickel and diming them to death to make a buck, they sour the market, and make it difficult for other legitimate martial arts to exist and are happy all the way to the bank. They wave the flag and the promise of Olympic competition in some ones face and tell them that they think they have real talent and then hit them with that contract. Korean first degree blackbelts when they immigrate to this country are automatically elevated to third degree and third degree are or were automatically elevated to fifth degree at one time. By doing that they then can promote all these one year wonders to first degree status who are nothing more than paper tigers.
Some of all this has also been tied to a national Korean Christian church group which among other things gives and has tax exempt status since that organization is a religious, nonprofit organization. That organization also has been investigagted a number of times on the state and federal level and some of its business practices and financial dealings have been cited and it also has at times drawn the attention of the Departments of Immigration and the IRS. They have a church less than three miles from my home that among other things includes a large dormitory for immigrating Koreans and Korean families.
I know of no other organization that is involved with martial arts that takes the approach that the Kukkiwon has together with the WTF to further their art the way they have. If you recall several of the WTF’s high ranking officials in this country as well as France were fired or disbarred from their positions for manipulation and/or embelzement of Olympic funds. I belonged at one time to both the JKA and the IJF long before any of this and those organizations have never put themselves in any kind of light that remotely resembles any of the above all of which has been documented and reported in various ways long before you ever asked this quesiton even. The Kukkiwon and WTF’s actions and the results of those actions is one of the reasons why TKD is in such a sad state of affairs now as well as not very well respected by anyone much outside their own scope in the martial arts.
Shobu-Ippon International Shotokan Open 2007 Demonstration
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