Through the preceding discussion we can grasp that attack and defense are no different from each other. Therefore, one should establish your opponent opposed to the world but with one’s own harmony in it. Therein will one realize the sameness of attack and defense that is the nature of correct Taekwondo.

When you strike your opponent you should break his will with your will, oppress his tide down with your tide, scatter his vigor with your Kihap , and shatter his trunk with your weapon. When you block the opponent’s attack you should empty yourself to frustrate his intention, carry your tide on his and scatter his sharpness and absorb yourself in it to create your own attack. Seen in this way, how could attack and defense not be the same?

If your hands and feet (your weapons) are firm and quick you can injure the opponent at will. If your vigor is sharp and you are skilled in controlling your battered spirit you will suppress the opponent with ease and even without injuring him. And if your tide is firm and deliberate you will easily surpass him even without a fight. You can endure the opponent’s attack if you are strong in body. You can turn his attack to your own if you fill yourself firmly. He will be unable to find a target to attack if you empty yourself fully. How can one differentiate between attack and defense?

If you merge yourself with your opponent’s attack and so have him opposed to the world in an efficient manner, this defense will prove no less effective than the best offense. As a result, the opponent will collapse by themselves, owing to their own attack, driving themselves against the earth to the loss of their power. Thus, as concerns attack or defense we can say that neither is such but that thinking makes it so; it is only what the world thinks that distinguishes an attack from a defense. However, it is Taekwondo that harmonizes an attack and defense into oneness, which is manifested through action.

How can you follow these teachings?
Seek out an empty point in the opponent’s movements, and then enter into it. As every motion is a continuous flux of emptiness and fullness resulting in HeoSil, you will surely find an empty point in his motion. You should strike his Heo in it. At this moment you should harmonize two kinds of distance between you and him: One is your attack distance to penetrate his center, the other is your defensive distance such that you do not draw back from his attack but rather move suddenly aside to an unanticipated spot.

Correct distance for penetrating the opponent dictates that you strike at his center, as soon as you spot a favorable chance, breaking through his defenses with the tide of a charging beast. What is critical is that you possess the nature of a tidal swell submerging and overwhelming a rocky shore.

Correct distance in moving aside dictates that you do not attempt to directly counter the opponent’s fierce attack with powerful tide, but rather suddenly move aside to stab his mind with vacuity. It is important here that you do not distance yourself far from him but maintain a proper distance from him as you seek out your opportunity. What is critical is that you not consider drawing back.

The secret tip to attaining these skills is to keep your breathing even and under perfect control. Breath is the main stem of change, extending from the bottom to the tip of all vital phenomena, and the axis that binds mind and body as one. Controlling breathing you can control mind and the motion, and promoting your body which mediates between the two, you can make a movement that accords with the mind and body that supports such a motion.

In this manner you can calm your mind to control breathing, with which you will generate balance and harmony in your body’s vigor and reconcile them to the movements of your bones and muscles, so that you can subdue your opponent and defend against his attack. This is possible because biological breathing flows consistently from each cell to the entire mass. Therefore, breathing can ultimately prove the resource of power to attack your opponent and protect yourself.

The key point of breath control, be it in attack or in defense, is simple and the same whether or not you have mastered the other skills of Taekwondo. It is to inhale when blocking the opponent’s attack and exhale when attacking the opponent, with no unnecessary breathing. To inhale does not mean to merely take in air but to empty your entirety to receive his fierceness, while to exhale does not mean to merely release air but to fill your entirety so as to explode with your inner energy. Both should be done at once.