Hapkido’s Historian : Tustin Master’s Works Have Preserved the Martial Arts Form

The martial arts school with worldwide fame is tucked in the corner of a Newport Avenue shopping center, beneath a rented sign with burned-out letters.

But the students who converge on the small school each year from around the globe are attracted to the man inside, an instructor who holds the highest hapkido ranking in the world.

“This place is a lot like him,” one student says of his teacher, Kwang Sik Myung. “It’s a hidden jewel.”

Myung is renowned within the martial arts community because he was a favorite pupil of the man recognized as the father of modern hapkido for resurrecting the Korean martial art after Japan’s 35-year occupation of that country ended in 1945. Myung studied with Yong Sool Choi--a strict, drawn instructor who gave grueling backyard lessons to only a handful of young men--for more than 25 years before his death in 1986.

“There were only a few students Grandmaster Choi chose to teach everything to, and they were the ones he hoped would preserve hapkido in its truest form,” said Dan Pinkowski, a martial arts specialist in Chicago. “Master Myung took over that task of preserving history.”

Today, Myung, 57, oversees 234 martial arts schools in 120 countries as president of the World Hapkido Federation. He hosts seminars throughout the year at various member schools and in Tustin, where he moved in 1994 after five years in Los Angeles. Yet he continues to teach students of all levels virtually full time, six days a week.

“He’s a legend,” said Carol Hart, managing editor of the national Taekwondo Times magazine. “He has a card in everybody’s Rolodexes here.”

Myung also teaches taekwondo, a martial arts mainstay, but said it’s the precision moves and choking, throwing and debilitating pressure points of hapkido that he loves most.

“It’s a part of me,” he said. “It’s in my heart.”

Three martial arts schools in Orange County offer lessons in hapkido, which emphasizes technique over “brute force” and yet is nothing short of deadly, said Konrad Spillman, an instructor in Aliso Viejo who has studied with Myung since 1989.

Spillman said it’s unusual for an instructor with Myung’s expertise to personally teach classes every day, rather than hand them over to assistants and supervise instead.

“Master Myung’s dedication is unparalleled,” Spillman said. “He is really the instructor and this is really his art. I am just fortunate to call him my teacher.”

When Myung brought all 3,864 hapkido techniques to the United States in 1975, he had done what no traditional Korean martial arts master ever dared: He put the lessons on paper and published them. The same fears that had decades earlier bound his ancestors to martial arts secrecy prompted Myung, a man of few words, to make a record of its history, he said. He was alarmed that his art would not be taught properly as it grew in popularity and instructors of all disciplines became attracted to its unique style.

“I cannot keep others from teaching hapkido, but I can give them guidelines for teaching it the right way, the true way, the way it was meant to be,” Myung said. “It is very important that I do this while I am here. I have this responsibility.”

James Garrison, a martial arts historian and Portland, Ore., therapist, said Myung’s writing has made him famous.

“Organizing the art forms that way, for the whole world to see--it just wasn’t done,” Garrison said. “He had the vision to change that, and no book has ever replaced Master Myung’s bible.”

Myung has written five more books and is currently working on a textbook series that will be the first of its kind for hapkido when it is printed later this year. He has also produced 14 instructional videotapes, including one specifically designed for students who use wheelchairs.

Most of Myung’s students said they didn’t learn about his unique standing until weeks after they began lessons at his U.S.A. Hapkido Taekwondo Center in Tustin. He has a modest advertisement in the yellow pages, has no Web page on the Internet and seldom speaks of his history--often to the frustration of his pupils, who like to brag of their master’s accomplishments and give recognition to their school.

“But Master Myung is more humble than that,” said Donald Hahn, who works as an assistant for Myung.

Another assistant, Tim Shin, said: “He cares about his students more than all of that other stuff, the business stuff.”

Teaching also allows Myung to continue training himself, he said. Although he reached the rank of tenth-degree black belt years ago, Myung said he is still polishing the spiritual skills of hapkido and perfecting the breathing exercises that bring power to his treasured art form.

“Always, I must keep developing myself,” Myung said. “And always, as long as I can move, I will keep teaching. It is my way.”

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A Hapkido Primer

* Origin: First practiced exclusively by Korean monks and ruling families as a means of self-protection and personal safety. During 35 years of Japanese control over Korea, cultural displays were forbidden and it virtually disappeared. Resurrected after World War II by Yong Sool Choi, who had been secretly studying in mountain locations for years.

* Method: More than 270 major techniques with possibility of 10,000 variations, and 3,864 attack and defense techniques are used. Moves involve joint-locking, striking, throwing, choking, kicking and the use of weapons.

* Style: Capitalizes on body’s weakest areas, including arteries, veins, nerves and paralyzing pressure points. Technique is emphasized over physical strength; hapkido draws its power from a range of breathing exercises.

* Students: Because it focuses on close-body contact and self-defense techniques designed to overpower an attacker, it can be effective choice for women. Since it requires less muscle force than most martial arts, it is also taught to children and seniors. Techniques learned while standing, lying or sitting offer students who use wheelchairs opportunities as well.

* Range: Found in more than 100 countries and widely used by law enforcement and the military.

Source: Times reports; Researched by BONNIE HAYES / Los Angeles Times