I did a search, and I don’t think this has been posted before - I apologise if that’s incorrect. As usual, I found this with the work search engine:
[quote=“”‘Chungju hopes to see martial arts festival evolve into new Olympics’, Yonhap News Agency, 6th October 2005“”]
As a white-haired grand master darts around a sound stage batting away sword thrusts with an Oriental paper fan, Han Cheol-hwan dreams of his city hosting the Martial Arts Olympics.
“We’ve started making preparations, but at the moment it’s still only an idea,” said the vice mayor of this city of 220,000 in North Chungcheong Province, home to the government-subsidized Chungju World Martial Arts Festival that runs from Oct. 1-8.
“Last year we started a movement to really enlarge the festival and promote it as a global martial arts Olympics,” Han added.
“But even though our government totally supports us, other countries aren’t as fortunate.”
The festival, now in its eighth year, transforms this provincial city 140 kilometers south of Seoul into a virtual Noah’s Ark for the world’s combatants for seven to 10 days.
Under the mid-week burning sun, Filipino arnis fighters lunge at each other with rusty knives and orange-robed Shaolin monks from China make tiger stances next to a giant digital screen.
Meanwhile, the original Korean fighting art of tekkyon tries not to concede too much ground to rivals like the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira, created in the 1500s by African slaves and sure to send pulses racing in Korea with its breakdance-style kicks and headspins.
But tekkyon, intangible cultural asset No. 76 as of June 1983 and the official reason why the festival is held, is fast becoming a pawn in the high-stakes game of municipal promotion.
Now Han wants to use it to help charter Chungju, once famous for its apples and natural spa, into the annals of history.
“This year we’ve had 65 teams come from around the world, but next year we want to have competitions, sell tickets and introduce rules and regulations,” he said.
With South Korea’s eastern town of Pyeongchang failing in its bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics and taekwondo facing the chop as an Olympic sport after Beijing 2008 unless it reforms its staid rules, provincial Korea is crying out for people like Han to put it on the world map and give it a global sense of identity.
Former mayor Lee Si-jong, now a National Assemblyman, launched the festival in 1997 as a national tekkyon tournament and changed the format in 2000 by making it an international show of all the fighting arts.
Dance performances and ample amounts of tanned Brazilian flesh in green paint, snake masks and little else added an extra edge to the testosterone-fueled event.
Lee gave an opening ceremony speech on Saturday during which he expressed amazement at the effect on local residents of what now stands as the biggest show of its kind on Earth.
“Chungju has become more global-minded,” Lee told Yonhap News Agency at the festival. “I noticed that when it first started local people would run away if they saw someone from Africa, but now they run up to them and ask for a photo. They’ve become more confidant.”
“What he has done is really remarkable,” said Kim Gui-jin, president of the Korea Kyuktooki (kickboxing) Association.“Before the festival, local martial arts didn’t get much publicity, but now they’re getting to be part of the global community.”
Good news for Chungju, but maybe not for tekkyon, which has a turbulent history of political and cultural suppression and now risks being eclipsed again.
Which might explain why taekwondo, the baby brother who now dwarfs it 100 times over, is practically the only martial art not on the guest list.
Halfway through the eight-day event, some of the invitees knew of hapkido and taekwondo, but were clueless when it came to tekkyon.
“What is it?” asked one member of the African stick-fighting team on Wednesday.
“Tekkyon is the origin of oriental martial arts," said master Cheon Jeong-yeap, also vice chief of the festival’s organizing committee. "Chungju is the tekkyon Mecca and the purpose of this festival is to globalize the art.”
Composed of three parts, pumbalgi (graceful steps), hwalgaejit (circular motions with the arms) and balchagi (the act of kicking), tekkyon stretches back through the centuries and, according to noted Korean scholar Shin, was exported to China some 1000 years ago where it evolved into Chinese boxing.
Legend has it that during the Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392) a soldier’s promotion depended on his skill at the acrobatic art that fuses elements of what we know as tai-chi and kung-fu.
The next millennium saw it crumble under a number of mighty opponents, including the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), when all martial arts were played down, the imperial Japanese, who outlawed it from 1907-45, and the World Taekwondo Association, who added the final nail by building its successor into an Olympic sport for Sydney 2000.
In addition to that, Cheon, who spent Wednesday being trailed by a Ukrainian film crew, now has to contend with every exotic fighting art ever invented.
“Two years ago, we tried to combine the different arts, but the output was no good, not interesting, no punching or kicking, (opponents were) just watching (each other),” he said, killing off any idea of the festival emerging as a mixed martial art tournament like K-1.
Announcer Christine Lee said tekkyon pales in comparison to some of its rivals.
“Without it we can’t continue this festival, but it doesn’t get much popularity. Korean wu-shu (kung fu) is the best, it attracts so much attention. And capoeira, Shaolin and hapkido,” she said.
Nathan Dominguez of the Philippines’ national arnis team, which mixes long and short blades, sticks and unarmed combat, disagreed.
“It’s very harmonious, very Korean. Personally, I like the philosophy. It’s non-confrontational, however they get the job done. Nothing in excess,” he said.
However, as far as the National Assemblyman, Lee, is concerned, tekkyon’s future is small fry compared to the benefits the festival heralds for the city, state and the field of sports.
“Just think, the martial arts Olympics might be even better than the original Olympics,” he said.
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Some interesting opinions on tekkyon there, which I think I’m right in saying has a somewhat contentious history, as evidenced once again in the comments from the above article. Saying that it is ‘the origin of the martial arts’ stands out as particularly striking; but from what I’ve read of Korean MA history threads, that isn’t a surprising stance for Koreans (or indeed many other MAs with a strong national linked).
A shame that this apparently isn’t going to be a ‘combination’, and the reason is again revealing - the output was ‘no good’ due to a lack of ‘punching and kicking’. However, Cheon doesn’t indicate that the problem was too much grappling (of which there is conspicuous lack in the article), but that the competitors simply ‘stood and watched each other’. That sounds a bit like the TKD on show at the Olympics, but I’d be interested to know what rule sets were in place to create that uneventful environment Cheon describes.
There are a bunch of good quality pics on the site, and of those this one looks promising:
And I’m sure as a fan of acrobatics and flashy MA, I’d enjoy this performance too:
