Kim Ki-whang

Kim Ki Whang (1920-September 16, 1993) was also known in the USA as Ki Whang Kim. He was a Grandmaster in Korean martial arts. He was for a long time the Chairman in the US of the Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan Association. He is well known in the history of the unification of several Korean martial arts into the overall style known as Tae Kwon Do.

Life

Kim Ki Whang was born in Seoul, now the capital of South Korea. At the time of his birth, Korea was under Japanese occupation. In his teen years, Kim Ki Whang moved to Japan and studied Judo. He took courses and studied at Japan's Nihon University, and while there, he also studied Shotokan, a "hard and external" form of Karate, reportedly under the tutelage of Toyama Kanken. He studied Kenpo, a Japanese tradition originating in the Chinese martial arts.

At Nihon Univeristy he became friends with, and studied under, Grandmaster Yoon Byung-in, a teacher of Master Kim Soo, Master Paik Sang Kee, and many others. Kim Ki Whang, in this time period, was promoted to shodan by the Yoshinkai Aikido Institute.

Grandmaster Yoon was a devoted student of the Chinese martial art of Chuan Fa, which he taught at the Seoul YMCA before relocating to the Sung Kyun Kwan university. Later, after graduation in the 1940s, Kim Ki Whang studied Shaolin kung fu in China for two years and then returned to Korea and for some time became the primary instructor at the "Yun Mu Kwan Kwon Bup Bu" at Sung Kwan Kwan university.

Soon he was employed at the Transportation Administration in Seoul, where he became friends with Hwang Kee, a founder of the Moo Duk Kwan Associations.

Master Kim moved to the United States in 1964, opening martial arts schools in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland and downtown at the YMCA in Washington, DC, and later opened a studio in Rockville, Maryland.

Martial Arts Style

Grandmaster Kim Ki Whang (Ki Whang Kim)'s public martial arts schools in the Washington DC area stressed a variety of factors:

• Excellent fundamentals such as solid grounding and deeply earth-connected stances

• "The power of the Twist", a final snapping technique arising from the earth-connected stance delivered to final focus by utilization of all possible muscles and sinews impinging upon the line of strike

• Traditional Tang Soo Do high kicks, especially the back-kick and the high side-kick, both of which are mainstays of the Korean traditional styles

• Total independence of any and all weapons. "It is better to not need a weapon when you don't have one."

• "One Step Sparring" exercises, also a traditional Korean martial arts mainstay.

• Kata ("forms"), or repeated complex training exercises

• Sparring. Grandmaster Kim believed that only through constant competition could a person develop excellence. Additionally, as the emphasis on very solid stances and slow staged kata could lead to a sort of robotic jerkiness, only constant competition and sparring could break a person out of this hidebound nature and promote the liquid flow which is one of the cores of effective application of martial-arts skills.

Criticisms

Grandmaster Kim, as Chairman in the US of the Moo Duk Kwan Association, did not rigorously adhere to the cirriculum of the Moo Duk Kwan as practiced in Korea. He and his subsidiary Master teachers did in fact teach Moo Duk Kwan and Tang Soo Do, but they did not teach it in the same order and progression as did Korean classic teachers. For example, some of his mid-level below-black-belt forms were derived from kata usually taught only to mid-level black belts as weapons forms; Grandmaster Kim taught them as unarmed forms which demonstrated that the power of the weapons came from the martial arts practitioner, rather than from the weapons carried by the practitioner. A kindly (if powerful) man with a subtle sense of humor, Grandmaster Kim generally didn't inform the lower-level students of this, but let the controversy simmer among the black-belts who found themselves re-learning the same form as a weapon form to achieve the Fifth Dan black belt.

Also, purists have criticized Grandmaster Kim for his alleged importation of Okinawan technique and repertoire into his American style of Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do, and a de-emphasis of certain elements of the adult military style. For example, although he taught the "spear hand" as part of the traditional kata, he generally did not instruct below-black-belts in its use in sparring or combat. Comparably, he taught the use of the direct forward fist in preference to the backfist. Also, at least in below-black-belt instruction, he taught the use of the "edge hand" as a block rather than as a strike, and didn't at all teach the use in sparring or combat of the "ridge hand" (reverse edge hand).

Influence

The influence of Grandmaster Kim Ki Whang on the practice of martial arts in the US cannot be either overstated, or understated.

It cannot be overstated because of the very high ratio of his students who went on to great success in both national and international competition. For a sensei who did not rigorously adhere to the official cirriculum of the Moo Duk Kwan Association or the American Tang Soo Do Federation, he certainly produced a great many students who could carry forward pure and continuing examples of the style.

It cannot be understated, because Grandmaster Kim's students in the Washington DC area passed on his eclectic and syncretic teachings via surprising routes to surprising places. His command of multiple martial arts, and his insistence on non-weaponed techniques, influenced martial arts as taught to various elements of US military and paramilitary services, as well as martial arts learned (or taught to the unwary) in back-alley scraps throughout the Greater Washington DC Metropolitan Area.

Grandmaster Kim's many students continue to teach both his arts -- as best they can or may -- as well as his philosophy.

Philosophy

While Grandmaster Kim did not ever master colloquial unaccented English, he had an exceptional talent for something not far from mime, or the art of the Thespian. His instructional style would teach the willing and adept student to understand the flow of Chi or power through the structure of the body, and his occasional digressions into Shiatsu and Aikido were seldom very verbal, but were rather physically demonstrative. A powerful and grounded earth-connected stance in a student could allow Grandmaster Kim to break a board over a student's head with no damage other than to the board, yet a finger displacing a tendon could utterly disable a limb or cause a strong man's own muscles to yank him to the ground.

Although teaching his students an exceptionally powerful "hard" external style to the body, and promoting tournament sparring for victory as a compliment of -- and refiner to -- kata, Grandmaster Kim Ki Whang's philosophy of the mental aspect of martial arts was not far from those of the "soft" and "internal" martial arts of the Shaolin and other Chinese and Chinese-influenced masters under whom he studied. Nor, for that matter, were they far from the statement of Sun Tzu, "supreme excellence is demonstrated by one who may find victory without battle". Although his origins were in a society replete with Confucianism and subjected to occupation by a military power promoting Shinto, Grandmaster Kim Ki Whang is understood by many to have had a personal philosophy for dealing with the world which would be well-understood by any student of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. Certainly he is known to have had long association with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).

Grandmaster Kim frequently would mime and discourse on the proper technique for dealing with confrontation. It is better, if possible, to act according to the principle of "the meek shall inherit the earth" with the interpretation of "a kind word turns away wrath" or perhaps of "and if the soldier shall strike you on your cheek and threaten you, turn the other cheek". In the Grandmaster's eloquent mime of a non-obvious guard posture and a feigned expression of dismay and perhaps fear, perhaps an oppressor would see no challenge and nothing worth robbery. On the other hand, if you are not permitted to retreat and cannot avoid the confrontation, there are certain procedures which you may learn -- for a fee, if you are worthy and a person of good conscience, and after many years of study and a variety of tests -- from any of Grandmaster Kim Ki Whang's Master students and sensei, which will end any fight before your oppressor knows that one has begun. And that is how it should be, according to a kindly man with a subtle sense of humor who survived and prospered through a lifetime spent mostly under brutal occupations by very powerful, yet overconfident, military occupation forces.

It cannot be left unsaid that Grandmaster Kim Ki Whang, along with his contemporary Masters, Students, and Fellow Practitioners, were exceptionally devoted and diligent to preserve and expand the Korean martial arts during the period of the occupation, which many characterize as being a genocidal foreign dictatorship determined to stamp out all indigenous Korean culture and practices.

Honors and Awards

While at Nihon University, Kim Ki Whang became the captain of the school's competition karate team, with the nickname of "Hurricane" or "Typhoon" Kim.

Black Belt, Kodokan Judo.

Black Belt, Shotokan Karate, Third Degree.

Shodan, Yoshinkai Aikido Institute.

Chairman in the US, American Moo Duk Kwan Association, 1964 onward.

Among other awards, Grandmaster Kim had the Black Belt Magazine Hall of Fame award.

Notable or Famous Students

• Chuck Norris, exceptional competitor and actor

• Albert Cheeks, Grandmaster, 9th Dan, exceptional competitor

• Mike Warren, exceptional competitor