possible historical kma preserverence?

It occured to me today that China has a population of ethnic Koreans that were likely not subject to the harsh oppression of the Japanese during the Korean Penninsula’s occupation which squashed Korean language, culture, etc. The Koreans there are surely assimilating into general Chinese culture, but I am sure that some tradition and the language still survives to this day.

I wonder then if any native Korean martial arts or taekkyon perhaps survived there… I have never come across any research into that before. Has anyone else?

Perhaps I am wrong, and the Korean country border at the time included these people. Does anyone know?

I would think that culture and language would survive, but I tend to doubt the martial culture would survive. The main reason for this thought stems from the fact that most marital arts in China switched to Wu Shu due to communist government. This leads me to believe that this would effect the Korean population as well. I agree though it would be interesting to find out for sure.

Hmm, I hadn’t thought about that. Modern “wushu” was the result of the government reinstituting “culture” after destroying it during the cultural revolution. I don’t remember the dates though. There could be a chance that there was a window between the end of Japanese colonial rule and the cultural revolution. Hmmmmm… I will have to try to find out!

i think taiwan would be your best bet wouldnt it?

Not for trying to find a source for “authentic” Korean Martial Arts. However, you could possibly find traditional Chinese arts there.

OK, I did a little research.

Korea was liberated in 1945.
China became officially under the control of Mao Zidong in 1949.
The Chinese cultural revolution started in the 60’s and ended around 1976.

This on the surface seems to imply that it is quite feasable that the Korean peoples in China may have maintained some of their martial culture into the time of the Japanese leaving, but before Communist China started squelching non-CCP serving culture.

However, it seems that the Japanese did make incursions into NE China and Manchuria. So I don’t know exactly where the bounds of the Japanese colony were. And even if they didn’t include the Chinese-Koreans, it is not likely that much martial culture survived, as Korean (Korea proper I mean) culture had turned to confucianist philosophies and begun to despise martial arts for quite some time before the invasion.

Even assuming they did survive, once China was communist, basically the Koreans there had to return to Korea. Miguksaram has a good sized post about one such Korean (GM Hwang of Chung mu Do, if I remember correctly) who had to leave China at that time.

I think it is plausible, but not likely that any of that culture survived. I met a guy from the Korean ethnic area of China. If I get a chance, I will get his input on this…

This borders one two separate discussions, one the history of korean martial arts in china, and the other, the history of wushu.

Contrary to popular opinion, the PRC did not simply produce modern wushu out of thin air. From my recollection, after the cultural revolution, much effort was placed into finding surviving practitioners. Longfist was one sure to survive, because of the uighar’s practice of it(ethnic muslim’s who kept aloof from outside influence). As such, the original modern wushu is largely actual kung fu, which can be traced back from before this period, if standardized by amalgamting the most common moves and principles of longfist, and excluding some specialized moves from individual branches.

A friend and teacher of both modern wushu and traditional kung fu alos practiced muay thai and karate, to my knowledge, as part of his university experience. I should find out where the korean stuff he learned was through, though I suspect that the level of instructor in korean arts that the PRC wanted probably was not available in China, but through Korea.

However, wushu arguments cannot be based off of “wushu and traditional kung fu are two different animals”, which is actually not necessarily true. There are eras, and separate forms, some martial, some not. Korean arts could have been catalogued, though I’m not sure they would be, as the wushu movement early on had a lot to do with national pride in Han culture, thus avoiding the religious issues inherent in many of the arts. It is very possible the koreans, like the uighar, just kept about their business while the rest of China was busy doing all this.

Interesting. Perhaps your friend may know something about Korean ethnic groups native martial arts practices (if any).

I hope I didn’t seem to be insinuating that wushu has no connection to traditional cma’s because as you point out, that is proposterous. Modern ‘wushu’ was indeed formed by the government who collected the martial artists who weren’t killed and didn’t leave during the cultural revolution, formed committees, and had the committees develop standard sets (for example the Yang-like 24 taijiquan). They initially left the ‘wu’ out of the real practice though. I hear they are trying to reinstate it to some extent, but I don’t know first hand.

Still outisde of any discussion of wushu, I heard a quote from Mao Zidong along the lines of (paraphrasing) “Comrades should not fight one another”. A quick Google search turned up nothing…wish I could remember where I read it. Either way, the communist party seemed very against the populous having access to learning how to fight. Martial Arts would be oppressed either way it seems. But as you pointed out, some ethnic groups even to this day stay fairly autonomous. They are part of China, but have different rules applied to them, and are somewhat outside some types of scrutiny of the government. It is possible the Korean (note they call themselves ‘han’ too, although the character is different!) ethnics were like the Uighar ethnic groups and some of the Japanese-destroyed Korean culture is still alive there…

You have to keep in mind that what the party wanted in regards to training di not necessarily mean that is what the practice was. To those who wanted to know, that wu was there, it just took tact, as did anything productive in the PRC. One probably had to look when no one was looking.