After repeating until exhaustion that there are more than 47 entities that use the same acronym to survive and develop their activities, I conclude that all of them utilize it as a surviving method to make use of the goose that lays the golden eggs. This is the worst damage that they can do to the legacy of the discipline’s Founder.
“Divide and conquer” is the old saying. Today the reign of Olympic Taekwondo faces no challenge due to the internal division of the art created by Gral. Choi Hong Hi on April 1955.
In the countless times that I’ve acted as his translator in interviews and seminars, General Choi didn’t
lose the opportunity to emphasize that in contrast to other martial arts, his was unique. The same thing was applied all around the world. Verticality was not only a hierarchical order but also a knowledge condition. Such an assertion was understandable because his lecture matches his biomechanical procedure.
As a top example everybody had the Founder’s performances in person.
Entities who call themselves his representatives were the ones who damaged that unity and forced its atomization to say “here I am.”
Those who didn’t support him in hard times, being outside of official entities recognized by him, today are leaders of entities who call themselves his representatives.
His biomechanical speech was unique and today it is distorted by people who in those times weren’t mentioned for their knowledge in that area. These are the people who produced the disparity that is overwhelming us.
What to do with this discouraging panorama? Well, unify a sole performance, protocol and sportive speech.
We have to rescue the General Choi’s original proposal: Taekwon-Do is a martial art with a sportive area and not vice versa as it is today.
We seriously disagreed with the WTF’s behavior and we’ve ended up doing the same thing.
It is easier to carry out a unification arrangement of General Choi’s Taekwon-Do than to try to merge with those who have exhaustively demonstrated their wish not to do so.
With this internal division, it is possible that Olympic Taekwondo is pleasantly carrying out their activities without any pressure because with which of the 48 entities that claim to be a Gral. Choi’s representatives would they speak?
I think that there is enough capacity, experience and hierarchies with the required conditions to try unifying under a unique criterion.
The difficulty is to accept that unification it obstructed not for technical reasons but for economic and political motives.
Everyone wrings their hands and proclaims how wonderful a single Taekwon-Do with an Olympic wing would be, until it is confirmed they have to carry it out. Once they recognize what each one would lose economically, politically and in their power positions, they put the unifying dreams back in a drawer.
With this undeniable reality that shelters us, there are elements that are necessary to remember to avoid confusion, misunderstandings and false expectations in the hands of mischievous opportunists:
- a) There is no written legacy that determines with name and surname an heir of the martial art called Taekwon-Do.
- b) In the memoirs of the Founder of the discipline it is established in writing that humanity is the inheritor of his creation and not any particular person, country or regime.
- c) The only real heir is the practitioner, in whose hands lies the construction of the entity that contains the discipline as it was devised by its creator without capricious modifications.
Fully understanding what has been said allows us to clearly see the reality that surrounds us.
For 29 years (1973 to 2002) the founder of the discipline fought tooth and nail to keep his creation in one piece and prove that its name and only its name had been usurped. After his passing, a gradual but tenacious atomization began that did not need the old political adversary to destroy his work; this occurred at the hands of economic and personal ambitions. Those who claim to be its defenders are precisely its destroyers. In short, it is the triumph of denial
SGM Ricardo Desimone
to be awarded read again the previous notes.