General Choi writes in his book that having one man or country lay claim to inventing martial arts techniques is like having one man or country lay claim to inventing the wheel or discovering fire. General Choi had a martial arts background and was, after a performance of mostly Chung Do Kwan practitioners at a military demonstration for the Korean president given the task of training the troops. At the time there were only 28 divisions in the army. He formed the 29th and used it to assemble top martial arts talent forming the Oh Do Kwan, Gym of my way, or the gym for all of us, so any Kwan member could participate and not feel as though they joined a rival. General Choi realized that just as others had done before him (Funakoshi, Kano etc.), teaching on a large scale required a unified system,.Using the assembled talent he formulated the system and in order to further unify and solidify the art came up with a name for that system Originaly Tae Kwon Do to ease pronunciation, later Taekwon-Do to show the unity of the physical aspects linked to the "DO".

Readers of this index & especially this thread will be interested to know that a documentary about the history of TKD has been in the making for several years now. Finally the filmaker sent out an e-mail announcing the set up of their website, which is:

www.LuvFilms.com

Yes a punch is a punch and a kick is a kick to claim that one invented these basic techniques is well...interesting at best.

Very interesting site with some familiar names. Much infomation and view points to reveiw.

I had no idea greek martial arts had any influence over asian martial arts. Wow.

wow, that's long! sorry i don't have the time to read all of it, u did a terrific job.

Wow! Great job and thanks.

Nice job man!

The, "One TKD school", is actually quite a few, mostly found in the Midwest where the developer first moved directly from Korea.
The developer is Jay Hyon.
Chung Bong forms actually developed 1966. Perhaps first performed in Korea in 1974, though not confirmed.

Many students of grand master Hyon opened their own schools and are still preforming and continuing to teach these forms.

These can be seen here in video and pdf format as demonstrated by Karate North (under Master Tom Sullivan):

http://www.karatenorth.com/?page=ranks