I went to a lecture by a professor of Asian History and one of the people he mentioned was a general named Chu Mu. I had heard of the Genreal but unless you are a specialist on korean history most people don't know much about him. He invented a military tactic for infantry to use against cavalry. There was a battle where he had his first line of infantry lie down on their knees and elbows with their hands down while the second line timed the cavalry charge and vaulted off the first lines backs to attach the riders. I have seen something similiar in Tae Kwon Do demonstrations where they vault off each others backs and jump high to break boards. Also I have noticet that there are some Tae Kwon Do kicks that seem too high to be practical like 10 feet up. Is it possible that Tae Kwon Do took Korean military tactics and incorporated them into the system and that some of the high kicks were actually intended to be used by infantry against cavalry?

if it is the guy i'm thinking of at our dojang the red and sr. red belt form is called choong-moo. He was a korean admiral Hi Sun-Sin of the Yi dynasty. He was reputed to have invented the first armored battleship,Kobukson,in 1592 which is the precursor of the modern day submarine. The ship had strips of iron to prevent fire attacks and was used to repelle the japanese invsion because they thought they were demons since they had no luck damaging them.

I think this was an infantry general, there is a Taekwondo form named after him.

Were the infantry being used as springboards using spears or some other type of pole-arm to disuade the cavalry?

this is the purpose of flying kicks, to dismount riders. And general chu is one the the developers of modern day tkd, before him there was tang soo do and hapkido. This is a history lesson that my tkd master gave me after my first class, tang soo do and hapkido were his original styles and he switched to tkd in 1973.
reaper