Why you have to know Samjae and Kang-Yu

Some people learn good martial techniques hard yet fail applying it to their opponents. For they don't know its exact aspects. It is because the exact aspects of a martial skill cannot be discerned easily. So, if you have learned some martial arts, you would know that it is required to learn martial arts directly and strictly from masters.

However, there are some more problems. Even though you learn a technique exactly you cannot learn that way concerned with all the techniques.

Therefore, you have to know the fundamental principles of Taekwondo, which are Samjae and Kang-Yu.

PPT was written 10 years ago, though published last year(2000) in Korea.
10 years ago, I wrote the poem "That I clench my fist", which was adopted by a head of WTF.
He wanted to translated it into English and published it on the official magazine "WTF".
Then he explained it is required to write a central text of TKD philosophy.
Taekwondo was advanced all over the world, but only a little people could understand its philosophical or spiritual implication. So we had to present it in more direct way than the motions of TKD, and it was to write a book.
That was why I wrote PPT 10 years ago.
Its content is based on three kinds of Oriental philosophical tradition: confucianism, taoism and buddhism.
So I can refer each text to its bibliography.
But I didn't it in PPT, for it would have made the book more stubbon and hard to read.
Any way, PPT was not published at that time because of some political reasons.
In Korea, your age and your grade or something like that are more important than your ability or knowledge in some cases. I was very young, 23 years old only, and was not famous TKD master.
It was not appropriate to say such a young TKD man wrote a book on TKD philosophy.
So I decided to wait. I just gave the text to some of my friends who was interested in TKD.
4 years ago, I knew how to make a website, and make TaekwondoBible.com.
I thought some TKD men will agree to my thought in the world, but I thought it will take more than 3 years.
But in the first year I make the site, a friend in Canada liked PPT and wanted to translate it into French.
And you were the second person that began translating it into another language.
And PPT was published in Korean last year.

So the second book is by 10 years, actually.
Its title is "On Samjae and Kang-Yu". I will explain the ways of Sky, Earth and Man with Kang and Yu.
Kang and Yu are the essence of all kinds of martial skills.
Kang means concentration of your force on a certain point, your target.
Yu means following your opponent.
Every motion of TKD is composed of some parts to follow Kang or Yu, so it can be effective way to control over the opponent. But since people don't know how to explain its theoretical aspects masters shows only some demonstrations and demands his students to imitate them. It is why it is difficult to understand TKD motion.
Many masters have talked of Kang and Yu(hardness and softness) in TKD. But those concepts were too vague.
They were just analogy its sense to a natural thing. So it didn't help students to find more easy way. Instead those analogies made TKD some irrational things.
I think Samjae is more important than Kang-Yu.
In my opinion Samjae is basement of technique of Kang-Yu.
Most beginners cannot do what they understood of Kang-Yu when they heard of them first.
For they lose some invisible factors of Kang-Yu. They are spirit, tide, distance and so on.
The invisible factors of TKD is important. Many masters talked of importance of spirit, distance and so on, but they couldn't explain them all in systematical way. Almost of them were fragmentary.
They said spirit is important. But they couldn't why it is, related to visible motion or effect of TKD.
So most of them were also vague.
I think I can suggest some systematical ways of those invisible factors so that students can understand their problems of TKD with more ease. Since they know their problems they can be motivated more rationally.
At least it was successful in my TKD classes.

And I will refer to bibliographies of each text with the explanations of Samjae and Kang-Yu.