Hapkido

Hapkido or Hap Ki Do is a Korean martial art. In the Korean language, Hap (?, hanja ?) means "together", "coordinated", or "joining"; Ki (?, hanja ?) describes internal energy, spirit, strength, or power; and Do (?, hanja ?) means "way" or "art" (of life; of learning). Thus, Hapkido translates literally as "joining-energy-way", but it is most often rendered as "the way of coordinating energy" or "the art of coordinated power."

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The birth of Hapkido can be traced to two primary individuals: Choi Yong Sul (b. 1904, d. 1986) and Ji Han Jae (b. 1936). As Ji was initially a student of Choi, the foundations of the art must be attributed to Choi, however.

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Choi Yong Shul's training in the martial arts is a subject of contention. Primarily there are two main beliefs concerning his training. It is known that Choi was sent to Japan as a young boy. Once there, some claim that Choi was the adopted son of the patriarch of Daito-ryu Aikijutsu, Sokaku Takeda. This fact was overtuned, however, by the research in Korea and Japan of Scott Shaw. Shaw states that Choi was, in fact, simply a worker in the household of Takeda for many years and was not his adopted son. Tokimune Sokaku, Takeda Sokaku's son, states that the records of Daito-ryu prove that Choi was never a student of Daito-ryu. Some attribute his statements to the prevailing racism held against Koreans by the Japanese. To date, however, there is no evidence to show that Choi was the adopted son of Sokaku Takeda or that he ever studied Daito-ryu except by the claims made by Choi himself.

Martial art: Martial arts, also known as fighting systems, are bodies of codified practices or traditions of training for combat, usually without the use of guns and other modern weapons. Today, people study martial arts for various reasons including competition, fitness, self-defense, self-cultivation (meditat...

Korean language: The Korean language (??? / ???) is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Sovi...

Hanja: Hanja (lit. Han character(s)), or Hanmun (한문; 漢文), sometimes translated as Sino-Korean characters, are what Chinese characters (Hanzi) are called in Korean. More precisely, the name refers to those characters borrowed by Koreans and incorporated into the Korean language w...