Moodukkwan: The gym of Martial Virtu`

Hwang Kee the Founder of Moodukkwan he was sent to China 1936 while working on the Southern Manchuria Railroad. While in China he trained and studied Kempo at every opportunity. It is believed that this is how he gained most of his martial arts experience.

Hwang Kee claimed that as a youth he studied Kuksul but there is on evidence to this and may historians discount it.

Because he worked for the Railroad, most of Hwang Kee’s early martial arts schools were in railroad stations and most of his early students were railroad personnel. In the early days when someone thought of Moodukkwan, they though about the railroad.

The Art of the Flowering Hand...

...Hwasoodo was the original name that Hwang Kee used was for his art. He continued to expand his school. In 1945 Hwang Kee began classes at the ministry of Transportation.

Hwang Kee Learns The Pyong Ahn's & Other Japanese Forms

Hwang Kee, while having no formal Dojung experience in Japan like most of the other Kwan founders still managed to incorporate the Japanese Pyong Ahn forms into his Moodukkwan system. Hwang Kee stated in a interview that he picked up the forms from a book on Japanese Martial Arts that was in a library at railroad station.

Note: The late Grandmaster Kim Ki-whang of Washington D.C. who studied with Toyama Kanken in Japan told me that he had a copy of "Tote-Jitsu", Gishin Funakoshi's first book that he donated to a library that was part of the Rail Road system. It is the authors belief that Hwang Kee studied this book to learn the Pyong Ahn and other Japanese Kata.

Getting Out of Town

Moodukkwan like most of the other Kwan’s moves to Pusan during the war. During the Korean War the Korean Kongsoodo Association was founded. Within one month of the founding of the Korean Kongsoodo Association, Moodukkwan's founder Hwang Kee quit the Association because he was not on the testing committee. He was shortly followed by Chongdokwan’s Son Duk-sung for the same reason.

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Yours in the Spirit of Wisdom

Childan Sam Naples
Grandmaster Chun Taekwondo Jidokwan
www.taekwondo-4self-mastery.com