Reddit reviews A Killing Art: The Untold History of Tae Kwon Do

Please, please, do not try to teach yourself martial arts. Much of martial arts are about training a movement over and over again so that it becomes muscle memory. There are lot of subtle things going on in even simple techniques that you will miss by trying to teach yourself from watching a video, or reading text/looking at pictures. If you start to teach yourself to do the wrong thing, you'll only have to spend more time unlearning it when you start getting proper instruction.

If you're interested in things like history, and such then by all means plow forward. There are two books I can recommend: A Killing Art, and also Korean Martial Arts Handbook which contains a wealth of information on Korean arts in general, and a whole lot on the history and creation of Tae Kwon Do.

Completely agree with what /u/campbeln has to say above.

I would just add that if you are interested in the history of TKD,then there is a superb book on the subject, A Killing Art: The Untold History of Tae Kwon Do (which can be found here http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Art-Untold-History-Kwon/dp/1770410228 )

> http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Art-Untold-History-Kwon/dp/1770410228

The Facebook page of the author of A Killing Art says he's in the process of publishing an updated edition...so if you do opt to buy the book (which I recommend, it is a good read) you might want to make sure you get the new 2016 edition...I'm looking forward to it!

Some other random thoughts:

• I agree with /u/campbeln but would add that in addition to pissing people off, General Choi's outreach to North Korea was viewed at the time as downright treasonous...not unlike McCarthyism and "the red scare" here in the U.S. It didn't just piss people off...it made them think he was a traitor. (Personally, I suspect Choi viewed taekwondo as a way to build bridges between the North and the South...I think he wanted his country to reunify, and he saw taekwondo as one potential cultural bridge among many.)
  
  
• Also, my experience has been that nowadays even Kukkiwon/WTF practitioners (at least here in the U.S.) speak very respectfully of General Choi. They may not view him as the "inventor" of taekwondo, but there's no doubt he was a huge, driving influence on the adoption of taekwondo worldwide.
  
  
• If you want to see how tricky it is to identify a moment when taekwondo could be said to have been "invented" check out the timeline http://taekwondo.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Taekwondo .
  

Alex Gillis' A Killing Art covers this topic to a limited degree as part of a larger discussion around the spread of Choi's students around the world during the 50's and 60's (particularly focusing on Jhoon Rhee).

There are a lot of people/schools out there that learn and teach a very mythological view of TKD. I once had someone try to tell me TKD was a thousand years old. I laughed at him. The short of it is that TKD's age is measured in decades, not centuries. It is a modified version of karate developed in the years following Japan's occupation of Korea. It has changed over the years - it was originally much closer to Karate than it is now, but the common roots are there. Essentially after the occupation, and having Korean culture subverted, they wanted to make something their own. Adapting Karate was really the simplest and easiest way to do so when you see all the factors that came into play.

I would recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Art-Untold-History-Kwon/dp/1770410228/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346867883&sr=8-1&keywords=a+killing+art

As a good and interesting read. It doesn't have all of the answers, and some of it might be a little sensationalist (it's hard to say for sure), but it will change your perception in a big way!

I was lucky in a sense - I began with Tang Soo Do for many years as a child. Then when I started TKD, it was with ITF TKD in Australia. The standards were ridiculously high. Then when I came to the states, I could only find WTF TKD schools. That's where I ended up getting my 2nd dan (about to test for 3rd in 2 months). So I've seen a lot, heard a lot, and pieced together a pretty good idea of things along the way.

Stylistically ITF is more focused on real-life applications and I would consider the deadlier of the two. That's not to say all ITF schools are 'better' or 'deadlier' than all WTF schools, but that's the general trend. The roundhouse kick (what ITF calls turning kick) are different. In WTF you strike with the top of the foot with both foot and toes pointed. In ITF you strike with the ball of the foot. The blocking preparations are different too, but really in real life nobody does a full block anyway so it's kind of irrelevant.

In ITF you don't see people bouncing around much with their arms by their sides - punches to the head are perfectly legal (although honestly you won't see that at my school either and we're technically WTF because I train them for real life not sport). That changes the sparring dynamic a lot - the ITF you'll see more varied attacks and more frequent attacks. One of the things I hate about WTF is the rules have made it so there is a very narrow band of kicks that score and that's all everyone uses.

They have different poomsae - I like some of the WTF ones better, some of the ITF ones better. But then everyone has their favorites in any style. I dunno if that's more along the lines of what you're looking for?

If you are in to reading, "A killing art" is a good read.
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Art-Untold-History-Kwon/dp/1770410228