History of Patterns - First Taekwondo Patterns

First Taekwondo Patterns

In the very first editions of his book Taekwon-Do, General Choi only mentioned twenty Taekwondo patterns, along with some karate patterns. The original Taekwondo patterns were: Chon-Ji, Dan-Gun, Do-San, Won-hyo, Yul-kok, Chung-gun, Toi-gye, Hwa-rang, Chung-mu, Gwang-gae, Po-eun, Ge-baek, Yu-sin, Choong-jang, Ul-ji, Sam-il, Ko-Dang, Choi-yong, Se-jong, and tong-il.  In the 1970's, Choi removed the karate patterns and added four more Taekwondo patterns, moon-moo, yon-gae, So-san, and Eui-Am, for a total of twenty-four Taekwondo patterns. During the early 1980's, Choi thought some important techniques were missing from the original patterns, so he replaced one of the original patterns (Ko-Dang) with a new pattern (Juche). This kept the total number of patterns at twenty-four. The order of the patterns has changed somewhat over time, as well as the total number, but regardless of the number of patterns, Tong-Il will be always the last one. This is because it stands for the hope that North and South Korea will one day be unified.

Each pattern has a meaning. Except for Chon-Ji and the Juche, all the patterns are named after important people in Korean history, or historic events. For non-Koreans, these names are not too important in a historical sense, but they are still taught to Taekwondo students to preserve and respect Korean tradition. The diagram of movement in each of the Taekwondo patterns is based upon the traditional ideology of ancient Korean people. Each diagram attempts to match the ideological figure of what the pattern's name means.