Has anybody heard of a Martial Art called Haidong Gumdo?
I’m trying to ferret out it’s accurate history. The one they provide on the eng.HDGD.org website is fictional.
So far I’ve been able to discover that HDGD owes much of it’s history to a Korean martial art called Gi-Cheon (Ki-Chun depending on who says it), as well as to another Bhuddist Zen art called Shim Gum Do.
Does anybody know anything about this? I’d be indebted to you.
Sincerely,
–Grant
There are a couple of people who have actually studied the art who post on this board, they may be able to help you out better than I, but here is what I know. The Haidong Kumdo art does not have any recorded history until the 70’s, though some of the instructors claim the sword techniques date back the Shilla kingdom. I believe they base their movements as if you are going again multiple attackers. The forms are continuous as opposed to some kenjitsu form which tend to have stopping points within the form. I would say that they don’t have any Japanese roots based on the more circular motion of the forms. They have a bit more of a Chinese flavor to it.
Some of the Koreans that I have talked to in the past say that the founder basicly put it together to make some money, and it really doesn’t have any historical lineage. As I have not done extensive research, I can not verify either way. As for its link to Shim Kumdo, just keep in mind that buddhists didn’t carry swords. Shim Kumdo is also a recent “ancient discovery” I really would not put a lot of faith in what they may dish out as lineage.
Is there anybody else out there who practices Haidong Gumdo too? :new_uklia
another korean “bootleg” of a japanese martial art
You might try pming Silver, he’s trained in Gumdo, both here in Canada and in Korea. And his Master’s webpage is:
My background is Japanese Kenjutsu so I don’t know much about the lineage wars of Gumdo, but I had a chance to spend some time with Silver’s Master, Brian Gihm, and I was very impressed with his sword work. We compared different techniques and styles, and he showed me a video of a recent Korean test cutting competition, it was wicked! I didn’t like the Gumdo forms very much, I’ve seen them before and I’m a little skeptical of their application, but their test cutting was really amazing. Much better than anything I’ve ever seen in Japanese kenjutsu. If you’re just starting Gumdo you should be comfortable in knowing that you’re really going to learn how to cut, that’s a definite! But with regards to historical accuracy, who knows, who cares. I really don’t place much value in lineage and/or historical accuracy anyways, but then that’s just my personal opinion.
Good luck with your training.
If you ever see the forms of Haidong Kumdo you would say that it is more Chinese bootlegged than Japanese.
www.geomdo.org has a fantastic writup on the history of haidong gumdo in the documents section.
There is no doubt that the style has both Chinese influence as well as Japanese. I understand that the techniques are based off of the techniques in the Muye Tobo Donji, which is, again as I understand it, a plagiarism of a Tang dynasty military manual called the New Book of Effective Discipline with extra material added in by the Koreans over time including techniques likely from Japanese swordsmen of the time. (the chinese name as well as the author’s name of the New Book of Effective Discipline are both in that history writeup in www.geomdo.org)
The names of the forms, etc are still all in chinese (using sino-korean vocab), which seems to me to bolster the Muye-Tobo-Donji-recreation history.
For sure, haidong gumdo as a style/organization didn’t exist before two or three decades ago.
Likely due to availability, most schools use Japanese ken-jutsu equipment for practice (including the hakamas…), but as the organization grows, it is developing its own equipment that suits the style and its movements better than the Japanese equipment does.
it’s like chinese restaurants that have a sushi bar to make a little extra money
laughing…yeah…well…umm…laughing
Chinese Restaurant sushi often sucks…they usually don’t know how to make the sushi rice properly
At first glance of the history write up on www.geomdo.org i can pick out one huge problem. Kumdo means Kendo in korean. So what this guy is teaching is actually taken directly from Kendo. The history of Korea is pretty accurate, but the history of Kumdo is fudged to a spectacular degree if you consider it is taken directly from Kendo. The instructor may be teaching Gumdo, which is different, but if he makes such an easily caught mistake he’s probably not dedicated enough to be teaching. Haidong Gumdo’s history is pretty hard to figure out. Some Korean instructors will tell you that it goes back over 5000 years. Pretty interesting since there weren’t swords then. But many Korean arts are like this, many people fudge a few details or dates to make it seem like they’re the oldest art, when in reality its probably no older than Karate.
You are right in the fact that Kumdo = Kendo. However, you have to keep in mind that Kum/Ken = Sword and of course Do=Way of or Path of. In Korea they have broken Kumdo down into different sections due to seperate catagories much like karate. The most popular is Daehan Kumdo which is the equivalent of the Japanese sport of Kendo. Haidong Kumdo is the second most popular sword art. From what I have seen in Haidong Kumdo it is more geared toward cutting and drawing. So it would be closer to Iiado and Kenjustu than anything else. My wife’s friend has been pushing me to join his brother’s haidong group who meet on Sundays. After the holidays I will do that and give a more in depth report on my findings of the style then.
The history of Korea is pretty accurate, but the history of Kumdo is fudged to a spectacular degree if you consider it is taken directly from Kendo. The instructor may be teaching Gumdo, which is different, but if he makes such an easily caught mistake he’s probably not dedicated enough to be teaching. Haidong Gumdo’s history is pretty hard to figure out. Some Korean instructors will tell you that it goes back over 5000 years. Pretty interesting since there weren’t swords then. But many Korean arts are like this, many people fudge a few details or dates to make it seem like they’re the oldest art, when in reality its probably no older than Karate.
They make claims to coming from the mooyea dobo tongji. I have this book at home as well as a video of its interpretations. It is hard for me to believe that you can build a whole system around that book when the book itself is nothing more than a beginners manual of marital techniques as practiced by the military way back then. So that claim is a bit hard to swallow. Once I begin practicing with this group I will be able to give more factual details on the system.
TimeToPartyHard:
He teaches Haidong Kumdo (which can be seen with about 200 variations in spelling). People who type that word over and over often times shorten it to Kumdo, or HDKD, or other such words.
Miguksaram’s explanation is correct. All sword styles in Korea will be called kum-do (to also means sword in Korean from the Chinese dao1). The name in front of Kumdo is how they are distinguished, and there are probably upwards of 20 or 30 different names, when you factor in associations. The author of that history trained in the han kuk association of the haedong kumdo style, which has NO relation to daehan kumdo, which the the kumdo that you are referring to as being kendo. To make things more confusing, there is a haidong kumdo whos association is called daehan, making them daehan haidong kumdo, unrelated to daehan kumdo. That is likely the source of your confusion.
Yes, that was my impression as well. The flow seemed much more Chinese than Japanese.
The combination of www.geomdo.org and kendo/kumdo history does cover a great deal of information. But I would like to draw the discussion back to traceable modern information, rather than letting it wander along the course of ancient lines of transmission. (An aside: There are two large Haidong Gumdo organizations. The largest organization ‘Daehan’ spells it’s name as ‘Haidong Gumdo’, and the 2nd largest organization ‘Hankuk’ spells it’s name as Haedong Kumdo. The korean characters for gumdo and kumdo are apparently the same, but this seems to cause confusion for the folks pointing out that kumdo is kendo. Haidong Gumdo seems very different from modern sport kendo. Just watch the videos at eng.hdgd.org if you disagree. Kumdo IS kendo, but the word gumdo is being used here for a different martial art altogether.)
It is important to look at the specific stances and positions. To re-iterate, according to what I’ve dug up so far Haidong Gumdo was compiled from the combination of Gi-cheon and Shim-gum-do. you can go to the World Haidong Gumdo Federation: eng.hdgd.org, or else the Hankuk Haidong Gumdo Federation: http://www.krhaedong.com to see videos and pictures of their specific stances.
Now, if you look at the gi-cheon websites and their photographs: (http://www24.brinkster.com/thefringe/GiCheon/
, and http://www.gicheon.org/synopsis.shtml ,)
…you should see that there are several stances in common. Specifically, Nae-ga-shin-jang (HDGD horseriding stance, with the arms extended in front), and So-Do Se (small stance)
The stances are almost exactly the same, and share the same names. So far I can’t find martial arts that uses either of these stances, and since the names and the postures are identical, this is one piece of evidence that supports the gi-cheon roots of HDGD. It is important to know that Gi-cheon contains a large sword curriculum, though it is largly an unarmed martial art. Feel free to research and refute me if you have good info. Particularly, if you’re able to read/speak korean see if you can dig something up. That’s my major limitation as a caucasian N.A. researcher here. See if you can add to/refute my claims.
Anyways, Shim gum-do roots seems a bit harder to trace, although in their one book, “The Art of Zen Sword
The History of Shim Gum Do Part One”, they have pictures of techniques and stances that are very similar to haidong gumdo. You can look at them at (http://www.shimgumdo.org/) Specifically, the shim-gum-do “wae-su” style (one handed) of sword seems very similar to the Hankuk Haidong GD federations wae-su style. Also, the SGD bow, (with the sword held vertically in front of the practitioner), is identical with that of HDGD.
I can provide more references on demand if you like, and I’m open to debate. email/msn me at baldwin_grant@hotmail.com, or just respond here, it’s up to you.
-G
The ‘gi ma se’ stance is also used in other martial arts. There is a Chinese martial artist called Yang Jwing Ming who writes TONS of books. Look at his book on White Crane, in the stances section he demonstrates basically exactly the same stance as ‘gi ma se’. In fact, lots of other martial arts use the stance, you usually see it practiced in a MUCH higher incarnation though.
the gum/kum confusion is because of this: in korean, the first consonant of the first syllable of a word is often aspirated. So in hangul, the first syllable is made of the characters for g, eo, and m. But because it is pronounced with the first consonant aspirated, it sounds like k eo m. So someone who is writing in English will either follow the sound (kum) or the word (gum, geom, etc). The two federations (hankuk and daehan) spell haedong differently (probably for copyright reasons, or at least an attempt at it) is because the first word (hae, hai, which means ‘sea’) is written with two characters: h, ae. But ae is a simultaneously pronounced dipthong made from the letters a and i, so someone writing in our alphabet is just as correct to write hai as they are hae. It should sound like ‘heh’, so I like ‘hae’ better.
baldwin_grant : check your pms
doesn’t this lead to an increased incidence of pneumonia in korean-speaking peoples?
No. That’s because of all the rotten vegetables they eat.