Modern Beginnings

During the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) and the Korean War (1950–1953), Koreans developed a new appreciation for military training and a nationalistic interest in Korea's own ancient military and cultural heritage. An attempt was made to create a traditional martial that could be traced from ancient times, but, since the ancient arts were long forgotten, any new martial art had to be based on the Chinese, Okinawan, and Japanese martial arts in which the Koreans learning during the occupation.

In creating a "Korean" martial art, martial artists had to rely on their own backgrounds, which came from training under Japanese karate instructors during civilian service in Japan, from military service under the auspices of the Japanese army, or from Manchuria where Koreans were exposed to both Japanese karate and Chinese martial arts. Since most of the founders of these early Korean martial arts schools held black belt rankings in karate , most of the techniques developed for the new national martial art were merely variations of standard karate techniques. Early Taekwondo (1954–1971) was basically a variation of Shotokan karate , incorporating Shotokan "Heian" patterns into its "Pinan" patterns. Although other patterns were developed during this time, they retained an intrinsic karate character in technical style, use of stances, and overall purpose.

From the beginning, Taekwondo practitioners have attempted to justify patterns based upon the idea that they represent an authentic training tool for sparring. Patterns supposedly teach the fundamentals of attack and defense. Jhoon Rhee, the “father” of American Taekwondo, considers patterns a link between Taekwondo training and actual fighting.

In 1971, Choi Hong Hi’s departure from mainstream Korean Taekwondo was a turning point in its development. Choi's influence, as someone trained in Shotokan karate , was to preserve both a Shotokan style and philosophy in Taekwondo. However, a younger generation of Koreans who had not trained under Japanese instructors was coming into power. Beginning with the formation of the World Taekwondo Federation in 1973, Taekwondo began to adopt a more fluid and dynamic fighting style that relied more on speed, timing, and strategic body movement. It began to stress competition as an integral part of its training. Competition rules were extensively modified to encourage a higher level athletic skill development and to remove techniques that had no particular athletic development potential.

Patterns began to change to incorporate more realistic fighting techniques. Movements followed a "trigram" pattern of movement rather than the traditional "H" pattern. However, the patterns remain based, in both in structure and theory, upon karate forms. While Taekwondo has evolved into a rather unique martial art, the essence of Taekwondo is poorly reflected in any of the commonly recognized Taekwondo patterns, whether they be Pinans, Chon-ji, Palgue, or Taegeuk. These patterns are basically nothing more than an arbitrary series of movements that use relatively few variations of combinations of a very few kicking and punching techniques. They do not represent any correlation with the overall skill level of the belt level to which they are assigned. Taekwondo patterns still fail distinguish Taekwondo from karate style patterns. They also fail to provide a mechanism for the preservation of either historical movements or a repository for non-competition skills, such as self-defense. The only skill that patterns seem to develop is perseverance in overcoming the boredom of performing uninspiring patterns.

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