From: the_dojang-owner@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com To: the_dojang-digest@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com Subject: The_Dojang-Digest V8 #499 Reply-To: the_dojang@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com Errors-To: the_dojang-owner@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com Precedence: The_Dojang-Digest Fri, 24 Aug 2001 Vol 08 : Num 499 In this issue: the_dojang: Hapkido History the_dojang: But I _like_ my little toes! the_dojang: school directory the_dojang: Re: CaneMasters the_dojang: Re: The_Dojang-Digest V8 #497 BOUNCE the_dojang: Admin request the_dojang: Re: Troy Dorsey the_dojang: Losing little toes the_dojang: Re: unwanted visitors the_dojang: !-> Sojudo <-! the_dojang: KSR 2001-16: _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature_ the_dojang: . ========================================================================= The_Dojang, serving the Internet since June 1994. ~1000 members strong! Copyright 1994-2001: Ray Terry and Martial Arts Resource The premier internet discussion forum devoted to the Korean Martial Arts. Replying to this message will NOT unsubscribe you. To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe the_dojang-digest" (no quotes) in the body (top line, left justified) of a "plain text" e-mail addressed to majordomo@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com. To send e-mail to this list use the_dojang@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com See the Korean Martial Arts (KMA) FAQ and the online search engine for back issues of The_Dojang at http://www.MartialArtsResource.com Pil Seung! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Patrick L" Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 15:19:30 -0700 Subject: the_dojang: Hapkido History Dear Mr. Stovall, I appreciate your points, part of which ran: >The "relevancy" of these things is governed largely by what level one is >currently looking at the art. If I were looking at Hapkido at a very "low >level" (worm's eye view), then no, these things are not as relevant. In >fact, my focus would probably be more drawn toward the technical nuances of >the art...what does it "look like" and "contain" in terms of punches, >kicks, locks, throws, and weaponry. . . .< I grant that you have made a strong case for why what was written, was written. Let's see how did this thread start? Oh yea . . . "First the dinosaurs came, and they were very scary - but they all died. . ." :) with apologies to Airplane Getting in the WAY, Patrick _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------ From: Sarah Pride Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 17:40:44 -0500 Subject: the_dojang: But I _like_ my little toes! <<<<> That seems a little bit like fortune-telling to me. :) Do old skeletons have six or seven toes, or something? How will they start to disappear, like, some people suddenly starting to be born without them? Maybe if I wish really really hard, those little pink thingies will still pop out on _my_ great-great-great-great-great grandchildren. - -Sarah Pride- ------------------------------ From: ChunjiDo@aol.com Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 18:45:15 EDT Subject: the_dojang: school directory hi folks, we're finally getting around to putting the school directory on our website. we're also adding event pages. if anyone would like to list a school or event (rank testing, seminar, tournament, etc) just email us the following info: school listing: School Name Head Instructor's Name Style Address Country Telephone E-mail Website Your Name Any Other Pertinent Info. For events: all the basics: who, what, when, where, why (usually cuz we love martial arts) and all the other important info. thanks for letting me take up the bandwidth and i apologise for multiple postings for those who're on multiple lists. :) melinda Chajonshim Martial Arts Supply http://www.cjmas.com Toll Free: 1-877-847-4072 Proud Sponsor of the 2001 10th Annual US Open TKD Championships ------------------------------ From: MissIllona@aol.com Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 19:21:35 EDT Subject: the_dojang: Re: CaneMasters In a message dated 8/23/2001 3:21:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, the_dojang-owner@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com writes: << Jennifer, In regards to your experiment in creating a cane form...I don't have any technical advice, but I will offer a word of encouragment. Have fun...call it whatever you want because it's YOUR creation...and don't sweat the player haters. Good luck in your search. >> Jennifer, Go to http://www.canemasters.com I got my first cane thru them and their tapes ... and I have met Master Shuey, Sr. in person and I like him. He makes up his forms, too ... experiment ... canes are the greatest self defense weapon we civilians have ... we can carry it with us wherever we go and no one can take it from us ... as it isn't considered a weapon but something of necessity to get around with. And you can also get on a plane ahead of other people ... LOL Have fun ! Illona ------------------------------ From: Tony Preston Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 17:29:34 -0500 Subject: the_dojang: Re: The_Dojang-Digest V8 #497 |> Anybody else want to share stories about some of the assorted creeps that |>have |>> graced their doorways? | I can't say I saw this personally but it sounds like a good way to |keep the unwanted "tough guy's" away. Not quite in the same category as the trouble makers, my son and his friend were both training (At the time they were green belts) with me (also a green belt at the time) and the class has a sparring session at the end. My son and his friend wanted to spar the Head Instructor two on one. He agreed and said they could after class was over. Well, They thought they would get him from both sides and with utter confidence, they attacked, one in front, one in back. The Head Instructor looked like he wasn't even watching them, he pounded them at will... The guy approaching from behind gets a side kick to the solar plexus, the guy in front gets pounded in many ways... They move around a bit, a repeat of the same thing... Finally, My son and his friend give up. I watched and thought the Head Instructor was better than any Martial Arts movie action I had ever seen, his strikes were totally on target and he did not even have to look at the intended target. He totally dominated them and looked amazing doing it. I asked him how he was able to do such an amazing display of skill. He answered that he was watching them in the mirrors on the wall like he always does while teaching! What looked like a vacant, far away look was him watching the guy approach from behine. It was almost comical how inept the two looked against him... I wish someone could have video taped it... Now, my son, years later is a 2nd degree black belt and an instructor, but I will never forget the lesson he was taught. - -- - -- Tony Preston *Team Amiga* Linux Developer since 1993 - -- SR Principal Engineer/Scientist - -- Atlantic Science & Technology Inc. - -- The Amiga Zone BBS 609-953-8159, Citadel 68K ------------------------------ From: Ray Terry Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 18:26:51 PDT Subject: BOUNCE the_dojang: Admin request Forwarded message: From: Jonathan Primack Subject: help me!! If any one knows of any web sites that are filled with pics and videos of teakwondo could you please tell me also could you tell me of any good demo team sites i thank you in advance for helping my search. John Mo kwan teakwondo (WTF) ------------------------------ From: Judy Barnett Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 22:34:43 -0500 Subject: the_dojang: Re: Troy Dorsey Speaking of Troy Dorsey. Mr. Dorsey has kindly agreed to lead a seminar here in the Dallas area for the GMAC on October 6th at the Richardson YMCA. As I get more details, I will post them. Judy Barnett 1st Dan, American NamSeoKwan TKD ------------------------------ From: Emactkd@aol.com Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 02:16:49 EDT Subject: the_dojang: Losing little toes People who believe that our little toes will soon go away should notice that eskimos are still not furry. Rick ------------------------------ From: Loucat101@aol.com Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 03:36:04 EDT Subject: the_dojang: Re: unwanted visitors One day our class was in session and a guy and his 6yr old son came in to watch. An assistant instructor was taking the warmup, and our main instructor was talking to the man about the benefits of Hanmudo. About halfway through her speech, the guy got up, dragged his son to his feet, and yelled 'this is s**t, not enough action'. He just walked out of the dojang and we never saw him again! Louise ------------------------------ From: In_Spec_Ops@gmx.net Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 13:13:32 +0900 Subject: the_dojang: !-> Sojudo <-! Greetings To All, After long and careful study here on a small island off the Southern coast of Korea I have concluded that an undiscovered Korean Martial Art exists... ! -> The Art of Sojudo <-! I have observed it's practitioners in the streets of our small town after a hard night of training barely able to walk! Talk about tough! I have even heard that they often train to the point of babbling incoherently, puking, loosing control of their... shall we say... bodily funtions and can even be found beside the road in the morning unable to make it home after the rigors of training! And their Ki Hap! Unlike any other! "Raarrff... Unnhh... Uuoook!" The sound echoes and reverberates through the still night air. From direct observation it seems if any combatant(s) utilizing Sojudo become involved in a conflict then any real chance of injury won't be from any defensive or offensive techniques. Most injuries/deaths seem to result from unintentional impact with uninvolved nearby stationary or moving objects (lamp posts, refuse containers, cars, motorcycles...), exposure or drowning. Anyone with any insight into this system? Comments from 12 year old 113th Dan Grand Phoo-Baahs from the Moose Stool Kwan Ondongee-Whump-Do or 95 year old 10th Gups in I-Do-No-Do welcome! Soju! Do(?), Tao Koje-do, S. Korea ------------------------------ From: Ray Terry Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 06:39:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the_dojang: KSR 2001-16: _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature_ Forwarded message: _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: From Hyangga to P'ansori_, by Kichung Kim. Armonk: M.E.Sharpe, 1996. (ISBN 1-56324-785-2 cloth, ISBN 1-56324-786-0 paper) XI+232 pages. Reviewed by Peter Schroepfer Leiden University _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: From Hyangga to P'ansori_ by Kichung Kim is a personal work and will be best appreciated by those who empathize with its autobiographical character. "Not knowing classical Korean literature, I felt excluded from the soil in which I ought to have rooted my intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual being." (IX) Throughout the book, one meets with numerous first person intrusions ('I believe this' or 'I think that,') with moving subjective commentary ("How vivid the voice of this distressed little girlÉWe can feel her sorrow and distressÉ"(109)), and even information about the author's experiences in teaching sijo. The subjective tone is not to be criticized, as the author never makes greater claims for his book: "From the beginningÉthis study has been a personal undertaking. More than anything else, it is a report on my reading of those works of classical Korean literature I came to love" (IX). As a record of a "personal undertaking," _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: From Hyangga to P'ansori_ is readable and largely enjoyable. Nonetheless, readers hoping to find a coherent and comprehensive introduction to pre-modern Korean literature may be disappointed. One of the book's attractive features is that it covers much of interest to the general Western reader, including several of the most outstanding pre-modern Korean literary works, women's writing during the Chos™n period, the authors H™ Kyun and Pak Chiw™n, and the genres known as _hyangga_ and _p'ansori_. This concentration creates a problem, however, in that while it makes the book more accessible, its scope means that most pre-modern Korean literature, or any serious discussion of it, is missing, as is an overall picture of literary history. Just as the student of European classical music must adjust expectations in order to get the most out of a class in ethnomusicology, so too a student of Western literature will have to reframe his horizons if he is to truly understand Korean literature, instead of simply reading extracts from it. The author does briefly raise important methodological issues in the first chapter, "What is Korean Literature?," and the tenth chapter, "Notes on P'ansori", as well as in short comments throughout the book ("We must not think of Hong Kiltong ch™n as a novel in the modern sense of the wordÉ"(141), "To fully appreciate p'ansori, one must attend a live performance by a master _kwangdae_ accompanied by an accomplished drummer." (207)). Nonetheless, readers versed primarily in Western literature would be better prepared to approach Korean material if they have learned not only that most Korean scholars consider oral texts worthy of literary research, as the author tells us, but also something of the dynamic relationship between oral and written literature in Korea, or how the high degree of orality in many Korean literary genres affects the unfolding of the narrative. Some background about traditional Korean society, literary production and distribution during the Chos™n period, the relationship between elite and popular texts in Korea, and several other general topics would have made this book more valuable as a guide to pre-modern Korean literature. Unfortunately, as well, many points in the book are misleading, if not altogether inaccurate. We are told that sijo "Éflourishes today as it has for nearly six hundred years, not only in Korea but wherever there is a Korean community." Nothing could be farther from the truth in Korea proper, where the 1920's saw the emergence of the so-called "Sijo Revival Movement" (_sijo puhžng undong_). Today sijo enjoys little more than a geriatric cult following, and the vast majority of young people experience the poetic genre directly only as homework or never at all. The author frequently enlivens episodes from Korean literature with a little storytelling of his own. Although this makes his prose more entertaining, his introduction to the "H™nhwaga", a _hyangga_ poem/song from the _Samguk Yusa_, goes too far in its imaginative fictions: They have probably left Ky™ngju, the Shilla capital, the day before or very early that morning and are now making a [sic] leisurely progress to the north. They stop for lunch at the foot of a cliff. The governor is on horseback, his beautiful young wife, Lady Suro, perhaps rides in a carriage, and before they alight they pause to admire the splendid scenery. For Lady Suro it might be her first journey out of Ky™ngju. She is struck by the scenery before her, the sparkling East Sea and the rocky cliffs. And what is that she sees high up on the cliff, near the very top? A beautiful flower in full bloomÉa red azalea perhaps? It almost takes her breath away. (13-14) As should be apparent, the thin documentation about the "H™nhwaga" scarcely justifies such a romantic recreation. What makes this fictionalization even more problematic is that the author first suggests the event may have occurred on Lady Suro's first journey outside of Ky™ngju, but later notes that "The Samguk Yusa account adds that because of Lady Suro's unparalleled beauty she had been abducted several times in the past, whenever she traveled through deep mountains and along lakes" (15). One might argue that these mountains and lakes existed in what was then considered to be part of Ky™ngju, or that the Samguk Yusa text can be interpreted to mean this particular abduction was but the first of many such unfortunate experiences, but it is far more likely that this is not the case, making such a dramatic departure from the text a dangerous journey indeed. Even more troubling, however, is a tendency that emerges in a footnote to Kim's chapter "The Mystery and Loveliness of the Hyangga." "My English translation of this passage is based on the revised edition of Yi Py™ng-do's Korean translation of the Samguk Yusa (Seoul: Kwangjo sa, 1979), 256-57." (23) In other words, the story of what happens when Ch™yong finds four legs in his bed has been translated twice: first from Chinese to Korean by Yi Py™ngdo, then from Korean to English by Kim. The "Ch™yongga" itself is written in _idu_, and thus difficult even for specialists to decipher confidently, but the accompanying text is not especially difficult as hanmun texts go, so the reader must wonder if the author of _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature_ is actually unable to read the language in which the bulk of classical Korean literature is written. Elsewhere as well, the author appears to translate from Korean translations instead of from hanmun texts. Many statements are merely confusing. In the chapter "The Incomparable Lyricism of Kory™ Songs," the author notifies the reader that "Éthere was no indigenous writing system during the Kory™ period and it was therefore necessary to rely on oral transmission of [Koyr™] vernacular verses"(25). Many languages lack indigenous writing systems, yet do not need to rely on oral transmission to preserve and disseminate vernacular poetry; _hyangga_ were recorded in the vernacular during the Kory™ period using a "hybrid writing system" known as _hyangch'al_ (23). Other instances follow: Kim notes that the _Samguk Yusa_ has a Buddhist "slant," (63) as if this 'bias' were anything less than the very reason the _Samguk Yusa_ is more valuable as literature than the _Samguk Sagi_; Hwanung of the Tan'gun foundation myth descends to earth at "T'aebaek Mountain"(63), the problem here being that without further explanation, readers not already familiar with the myth might easily take T'aebaek Mountain to be a mountain with that name that forms part of the border between Ky™ngbuk and Kangw™n provinces. The greatest contribution made by _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature_ is in the chapter "Notes on Shijo", in which Kim conveys his experience teaching a course in classical Korean literature in translation at San Jose State University, where, the reader is informed, the author has taught English literature since the 1960's. During the course students were given the opportunity to write sijo in English, and this was "one of our most fruitful activities" (87). One of the author's students, a certain Katrina Gee, "lived some years in Japan" and "had become interested in the haiku and in haiku writing" (87). The reader is given several of Gee's English language sijo, as well as two from "Mrs. L's son's eighth-grade English honors class" (92), though it is not clear just who Mrs L is, beyond that she wanted to give her eighth-graders "a basic background and history of shijo poetry, and enough understanding of the subject to enable them to write their own shijo poetry" (89). In the US, many elementary and secondary English classes are taught to write haiku, so it is only natural that Korea's most accessible variety of set-form poetry be given a chance as well, for it may be a helpful tool in literature appreciation. As the author notes, "experience has taught me that having students try their hand at writing shijo, adhering to its most basic rules, not only helped them better appreciate the classical shijo but also gave them an opportunity to turn the experience of their daily lives into poetry." (90) It will only be a matter of time before the occasional English class in large Californian cities, perhaps those having large Korean-American populations, begins experimenting with sijo. The author's discussion of English language sijo, particularly the guidelines and a suggested four "basic rules" for composition (90), would be a fine guide for anyone wishing to engage in such a literary endeavor. Despite its drawbacks, readers will find _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: From Hyangga to P'ansori_ an affectionate, and at times moving, tribute to the treasures of Korean literature. Such a tribute is what Kichung Kim sought above all to accomplish, and in this he has certainly succeeded. His personal commentary, which offers a new perspective on some of the most popular works of Korean literature, honors the tradition. Citation: Schroepfer, Peter 2001 Review of _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literature: From Hyangga to P'ansori_, by Kichung Kim (1996) _Korean Studies Review_ 2001, no. 16 Electronic file: http://www.iic.edu/thelist/review/ksr01-16.htm ------------------------------ From: Ray Terry Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 7:34:33 PDT Subject: the_dojang: . ------------------------------ End of The_Dojang-Digest V8 #499 ******************************** It's a great day for Taekwondo! Support the USTU by joining today. US Taekwondo Union, 1 Olympic Plaza, Ste 104C, Colorado Spgs, CO 80909 719-578-4632 FAX 719-578-4642 ustutkd1@aol.com http://www.ustu.org To unsubscribe from the_dojang-digest send the command: unsubscribe the_dojang-digest -or- unsubscribe the_dojang-digest your.old@address in the BODY (top line, left justified) of a "plain text" e-mail addressed to majordomo@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com. Old digest issues are available via ftp://ftp.martialartsresource.com. Copyright 1994-2001: Ray Terry and Martial Arts Resource Standard disclaimers apply.