"What is the essence of Taekwondo training?"

"It is just mind training."

The sun and the moon move only in a defined orbit, which is to follow the necessary principles; birds and beasts travel only along their roads because it is approperiate to their pursuits. Similarly man should know and follow the determined way of TAEKWONDO because it integrates all principles of the nature, of the reasonable teleonomy¹⁾ and of the rightness at once. Because the ethics can be meaningful only in man's activities and the truth with only activities' in contact with the reality the right way of TAEKWONDO integrates value and fact into one.

Then, why do we call this right way "Taekwondo"? Let me consider meanings of the word "Taekwondo" at first. 'Tae()' means both the foot and the trampling down while 'Kwon()' means both the fist and the fighting. Since those two words compose"Taekwondo" with one another "Do" we can conclude that "Taekwondo" means not only "the principles of human motions with all physical parts including hands and feet" but also "the way to punish trampling down unnecessary quarrels for the peaceful world". Thus, the essence of Taekwondo is not in the technique of bringing man to life, but in that of suppressing and killing man while the very aim of this killing is to make world peaceful. If you neglect this you can obtain nothing right during exercises and studies of Taekwondo.

Someone says with a biased emotions that the essence of Taekwondo is to revive man. But this is a faulty prejudice, which comes from his ignorance of multi-aspectedness of a thing; if any thing has one aspect then it also necessarily has another one. With that prejudice he naturally inclines toward emotional beautification of Taekwondo. Life can be because death also is, and big beasts can live because they prey on small ones. Then how on earth can you say that we have to measure these circular and boundless changes of the whole nature only with man's ruler?

The medical art is opposite to Taekwondo, then what would it be if Taekwondo were mere a technique to revive man? It is true that the essence of Taekwondo is technique to injure and kill man. One more thing to be said is that this is not its entirety, i.e., there are more than mere techniques of injuring and killing in Taekwondo. The mind of Taekwondo is not to close your mind distinguishing everything with the measure of biased prejudice, but to open your mind accepting every aspect of a thing. With this mind you will be able to see the light of life at the end of motion of killing. Thus, Taekwondo is a process of going on from under dark shade to bright side of life.

The dignity of life ought not be ignored and it is sublime to live. Thus, an enlightened Taekwondo man cannot help being most humble and temperate on his way between life and death. TAEKWONDO does not teach them to you but reminds you aware of these inherent principles in yourself. When you accept everything of Taekwondo just as it is and catch its exact essence, you will be able to know with no confusion the values of Taekwondo in life; the fact that Taekwondo is different from what is not Taekwondo in living; and even the truth that everything is same at a time.

<footnotes>

1) You may know teleology. It means, "The doctrine of study of ends or final causes, esp. as related to the evidence of design or purpose in nature; also transf. Such design as exhibited in natural objects or phenomena" (From Oxford Dictionary)
When we talk of teleonomy, it means similar implication, but different a little bit. While teleology describes an end-directed system from objective point of view, teleology means subjective end-directed system. Usually everyone has his own ends. He may make his plans in his daily life according to the ends. The overall property that he plan and pursue something toward his final end is what "teleonomy" means. Generally speaking, particularly of common sense, some middle end or plan is helpful to get the final end we say it is rational. In addition to that, we can say a system is teleonomic reasonably when the whole relations of methods, final end and its outer condition.
Then we come to face the next problem; the final end cannot be judge whether it is reasonable or not? We say, it is the matter of rightness(of ethics).