Chapter 7: Subak and Hwrang

Some of these forms of open hand fighting may have been eventually exported to Japan where they formed the basis for Japanese Jujitsu and Karate. The Hwarang-do may have been the forerunners of the famed Japanese samurai. In his book This is Karate, Matutatsu Oyama, a well known authority of karate in Japan, mentions that the etymology of kara may have been derived from the country of Kaya at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula.

Toward the end of the Silla Dynasty, the Silla throne was so weakened it could not recover. By 918 AD, the Silla court was dead, sapped by internal corruption and the wasteful living of the ruling aristocracy. By 935 AD, even the name Silla had disappeared. A once great kingdom had surrendered to the strongest of many rebel forces eating away at its territory. The average citizen was not touched by this change in power and Korea's philosophic outlook continued to grow. As the Silla Dynasty ended, the Koryo Dynasty developed.