Hi guys, I will be going to Korea in a little bit more than a month.. I'll stay there for 3 weeks and I'm going to train at the universities of Wonju and Semyung. There's a lot of good people training there, among others a world champion! Does anyone of you have experience at one of those schools and are there any things I really should or should not do while being there? Looking forward to your replies.
Hi there. I just got back from a trip to Kyung Hee University in Suwon last month - got my **** kicked big time. I never new humans could be so fast and powerful, I've never been so terrified of sparring in my life... But it was a fantastic experience though!
What belt are you captainmoomoo? And how long did you stay in Korea? Did you find the training sessions there very different from the ones you normally have, and if yes, how are they different? Are you WTF too by the way?
I'm a Kukkiwon 3rd Dan (i.e. WTF-style). I was due to stay for 2 weeks, but had to return after a week due to a family emergency. Interestingly, the sessions at Kyung Hee were very similar to what I'm used to here. I train at the London Taekwondo Academy (LTA), and my instructor Master Usman Dildar (Kukkiwon 6th Dan) has done a great job of implementing the same system here in London. The only difference was in the quality of the practitioners, which was a leagues above. It's to be expected, as they train everyday, twice a day, and graduate after 4 years with a bachelors in Taekwondo!
Yeah and it should be, I more or less sacrifice a semester of school for it! Captainmoomoo, do you also do WTF tournaments? And do you by any chance compete in Dutch tournaments?
Hey counter and goodluck!! Does anyone know if you can do ITF training in Korea? I'd love it if you could?!! I'd be there in a second
Hi gemtkd, I don't really know.. I know that my training trip was organized by my master, he just had contacts in Korea which he called for a place to train and stay. You could ask yours if he has contacts in Korea? And wouldn't you have to go to North-Korea then since that's where ITF TKD is the most popular? North-Korea doesn't really sound like a nice place to stay...
I have no experience of the schools so can't help you at all on that front, but make sure you take some time to explore the city outside of the TKD classes. Seoul is a fantastic city with loads to see and do, and has extremely friendly and welcoming people.
Yeah I think my trainer reserved a few days in which we'll move to a hotel in Seoul and explore the city. I got my ticket yesterday, coming really close now! Turns out I'll be away for a bit longer than 3 weeks, I'm leaving October 5 and I'll be back at the 28th.
Is your group linked with Henk Meijer at all? I’ve been on a couple of workshops with him, they were great and he seemed a really good bloke. Rob
Henk Meijer used to be the national trainer, but he's now training the French national team.. I've never trained with him myself but he is indeed a good trainer from what I've heard.
Okay I've spent my 3,5 weeks in Korea now, and have been back for a little bit more than a week. I've spent a little bit more than 2 weeks of it training, and the rest was sight-seeing in Seoul and outside. In the first week we were staying in Wonju, a city in the east, where we were supposed to train with the Sang Ji University. This is quite a small university for Korean standards, but it has some great fighters there so it's a good place to train. We had an appointment beforehand, but unfortunate enough for us they just appointed a new professor to the taekwondo department, and because no one had let him know of us coming, he didn't want us there anymore. So after only a few training sessions we were packing again and looking for another way to train. Here we were quite lucky. Another professor out of Malaysia/the Netherlands coincindently just came over to Wonju city, he's a master in "Physical Education Science" (I don't know how to translate it from Dutch into English at all, so you'll have to do with this) and has been the personal trainer of many good fighters.. He was okay with training us once every day, and since we were staying at (yet) another professors house who could provide us training facilities in Jecheon City, we were all good. There we were closely observed and every single piece of our techniques was examined and talked about. While this may seem as a waste of time for people going to Korea for sparring purposes, this has been amazingly helpful to me. My dollyo chagi, for example, has improved so much that I can make much more effective use of it now in competition. Next to that we training with the Semyung University team about 2 times that week and we were also asked to join a local gym in Wonju for a few times just to get some more experience with different Koreans. As all the Koreans, the head of this gym was really nice, and after our training sessions he actually took us out to dinner and to drink (a lot of) beers on their expenses, just to thank us for training with them!!! I've never seen this kind of openness anywhere in the world before, and I could give you numerous more stories of friendly Koreans, but I wont bore you all with that. Okay that was the first week, quite not like expected, but still very good. We had a lot of different experiences and I can say for myself that I learned a lot in that single week. Second week we went sight-seeing in Seoul and in the mountains in the east. I forgot the name of the park, but it was beautiful. Since this is a taekwondo forum I will not post these stories, unless someone is really interested in nice places to go when in Korea... Okay third week. We were with a whole group now (first week we were only with 2), we were there with 10 competitive fighters in total now. We stayed at a hotel in Jecheon City the whole week, and trained at the Semyung University. While this school doesn't have all THAT many people actually fighting tournaments, it still has a lot of good players and the ones who do competition are very good. As I said, they mainly make use of the teardrop focus mitts there (well.. in the first week too), and I had to get used to it in the beginning. That's a good thing for me though, because they can be very useful when used in the right way, so I should get used to them. The people there were really friendly again, and since Liam Cullen was referring to the "Soju Dragon" I'll highlight one story: We were all taken to one of the students house to enjoy some snacks and do some Karaoke (obviously). After we ate all kinds of snacks, the Soju came out and they started the game "369". I don't know how many people know this, but in this game there's a small number of people who tends to keep losing since they're not good at it. Fortunately not me, because the loser has to "one shot" a glass every time. This started out with beer, but it went more and more in the direction of Soju. After we finished this, the Karaoke started, and a lot more Soju came in. While you'd expect the Koreans to do nothing but eating, sleeping and training when you see them in the dojang, nothing is less true. These people know how to drink, and they put us to the test. The Soju story didn't end up well for all of us, but at least we got through it alive But okay, back to taekwondo again.. In the beginning of the week we mainly focused on a lot of mitt-kicking. This was good exercise, and later on in the week we more and more went in the direction of Kyurugi. We got the hogu out, and did some friendly sparring with all the players there. It turned out they were all pretty decent at it, and a small number was very good and too fast to be true. At one of the last days we actually went sitting in a circle with single matches in the middle of it. Helmets were taken out, and headkicks were allowed too. I had to fight the tallest Korean, and one of the best too (I'm 1.94 so I guess that's why I got the tall one).. The game started with me a bit careful and maybe shy because I didn't know how it would go down there. I was the first one to fight after the girls were finished.. After a few good kicks by him, I started to get into the game too. He tried a panal dollyo chagi, but luckily I could do a pushing front kick to kick him off balance. I scored back clear points and when he tried another high kick, this time a dollyo, I easily blocked it with my arm. This guy made a lot of good points, but I scored too, especially later in the game. I had him out of the field about 2 times, so that would have been deductions for him too.. All in all, I was really happy about it, even though an old injury came back.. It was really a great experience, and another week full of "aha!"-moments! Well this about sums up my Korea trip in short, if you guys have any more questions ask away
