Quote: I hate to do this but Mr. Duggen was kick out of Hwa rang do for lying about hwa rang do techniques and history, his own rank, using his rank to under mind his female students. http://www.hwarangdo.com/judical.htm#verdicts His has dishonored himself and the martial arts family as a hole. But if you chose to believe his lies then that is up to you and what you feel is right. But that is up to you. Sounds like "he said, she said" again. With that in mind, it is still best to gather information from all available sources to make the wisest decision.
Like I said I was not there so I can really can't say to much. And is partly why I have left the art. Don't get me wrong it is a great, great art. It is just the fact that with anything there is to much politces in there. Heck you guys have it with hayes so you can kind of see where I am coming from. I do however wish them the best though.
Actually, I found this nice little summery while looking into something else. So if the Hwarang were not a martial arts training group, then the idea of them having an influence on the ninja is a bit silly. Joo Bang Lee started the whole idea of them being an elite unit when he created his art and needed a history- kind of like Ashida Kim. In reality, the Koreans relied so heavily on their conections with the Chinese for safety that they let their defenses go to pot. They collapsed so quickly when Japan attacked them that the Chinese thought they had betrayed them and were helping the Japanese to attack China.
Nah... Recent events have caused me to start looking at the art of Hwarang- do with a bit more interest. When I saw the above on another forum, I was reminded of this thread. I thought I would post it here. I think it shows that ninjutsu did not come from Korea since there was no Hwarang military class.
Yup. In the late '80s when I was a yondan I spent a fair amount of time on special-operations missions in the Republic of Korea. On one trip over I physically "compared notes" with some Korean Special Forces officers I was working with and became friends wth them, and on the next trip one of them took me to meet his martial arts teacher as he knew I was interested in anything I could learn about very old martial arts. This teacher, a Master Jang, was an official at the Kukkiwon in Seoul and was on what would best be translated as its "research & development committee". He was aware of both Hwarang Do and Kuk Sool Won. . .and what he told me was that both Joo Bang Lee and In Hyuk Suh had previously been Hapkido instructors in Korea; and that they had created their respective ancient native Korean arts because they weren't havingmuch commercial success with Hapkido.
Yes, I remember you writing about how you compared notes on chain weapons on that first training exercise.
There are a couple of similarities in ninjutsu and hwarangdo- Bot focus on constantly adapting, both use anything as a weapon, bot stress getting low and staying low, and going to the ground. As for hwarang do influencing nijutsu in any way, the histories dont match up.
But ninja existed. You can't say the same thing about Hwarang warriors. They are a figment of the imagination.
Set the "history" aside for a moment and look at the modern embodiment of the warriors, YOU are no more a ninja then this man is a Hwarang Warrior, but we all try like heck to uphold the ideals set before us by our role modles. True there may be no connection betwen the arts but even so the spirit of the warriors was the same, protect, serve, and self cultivation.
But again, the Hwarang never existed. So trying to live up to their ideals is a bit of a fool's errend. And the guy who created the whole myth, Joo Bang Lee, is a dishonarable con artist and cult leader. So trying to live up to his ideals is a step back. Take a look at the following link to see how an ex student describes the cult he used to belong to. If you check out the facts, you will see they stand up on their own. http://www.hwarang.org/Warning.html
Ok Grim, you need to pull slightly back there. There is historical evidence that the Hwrang did exist. And some were involved with the Korean Military (though most were being trained for court). What's a much more fair statement is that there is no historical evidence that the Hwrang as described by the Hwrang-do organization existed. What does seem to be the case is that Lee took advantage of a desired to mainstream Military culture in post War Korea and ran with it, using the popular legendary Hwrang as a basis. - Matt
Which is not the same as saying that the Hwarang existed as a warrior class. That is the point I was trying to make. Your statement matches the point I was trying to make and the rest of your post puts it a lot better than I did. Again, trying to uphold the warrior tradition of a class that did not exist as a warrior class would be kind of hard to do. And actually, it may be the case that the Hwarang were kind of a bunch of "flower boys." Not really butch at all. There are a lot of cases in history where rulers made babies because they needed someone to succeed them, but otherwise spent a lot of time with young boys away from court under the cover of doing manly men type of things. That is the impression I get from the bare bones description of what the Hwarang were described as in the historical references.
Agreed Grim. I just didn't want to make the mistake of completely writting the Hwrang out of existance. And it should be noted that Korea did have well trained warriors (who had pretty high success rates against Japan for quite some time). However, as has been stated numerous times before (and this is a the quick and dirty version of the story) for various reasons they gutted the military. Culturally those involved in the military were considered barbaric and of a lower class. After WWII and the occupation, there was a big movement in the military to establish themselves as a appreciated class (note to Social Scientists/Historians: I'm using some loaded terms in here for simplicities sake). So they latched onto the mythic conception of the Hwrang as "cultured/educated warriors" and built on that ontological structure to overcome Confunsionist views of the military. Yeah, I've read some on that to. I'd be careful with the queer-theory read (this is the academic title for this btw). While I'm sure that some of this went on, there's been a big move within certain circles to uncover the "real" queer history of the world. You can find similair reads on the Samurai class. The problem that I, personally, have with this is that I think that these analysis can get clouded by personal politics. Translation: I've yet to read anyone who isn't a queer theorist come to the same conclusions. - Matt
I lerned something from all this, if you start a martial art dont name it, it only brings petty debate about things that dont really have anything to do with martial arts, When I start to teach martial arts Im gonna leave it at that ;martial arts, because no one can argue its a martial art regardless of history. HA!
Like honor and integrity??? The lesson you should have learned from this is to just be honest about what you are and what you have done. Then you will never have to worry about being exposed like Joo Bang Lee.
