Lesley Jackson is gripped by this biography of the history of Taekwondo. We are given a no-holds-barred recount of the birth of this global martial art and the mind-numbing corruption, back stabbing and total giggery pokery that would give any soap opera writer material for years.
A Killing Art
Publisher: ECW Press Pages: 244 Languages: English RRP: £17.99
Book Review:
Lesley Jackson is gripped by this biography of the history of Taekwondo. We are given a no-holds-barred recount of the birth of this global martial art and the mind-numbing corruption, back stabbing and total giggery pokery that would give any soap opera writer material for years.
“I now know that whenever a martial artist becomes a history expert, it is time to reach for the Scotch.”
Readers, the above has to be one of the best lines I have ever read in any book about martial arts. Alex Gillis has written the book that practitioners of Taekwondo have been waiting for years, a biography about their martial art. We have scoured the internet to find out information about the leaders of Taekwondo, General Choi, Kim Un-yong and Jhoon Rhee but only managed to get brief biographies from fan based websites. Well that has now all changed as we have a fully plotted history starting from that notorious incident when the young and reckless Choi Hong-Hi lost all his money on a game of poker and enraged a local wrestler by throwing a bottle of ink at him, to the creation of one of the world’s most popular martial arts.
‘A Killing Art’ starts with a taste of a seminar with the infamous Choi elder; physically tiny yet powerful, a living encyclopaedia of his beloved martial art yet also infuriating and sometimes cruel. We then go back in time to before the Second World War when Korea was occupied by the Japanese and Choi was a young man ready to set off to Japan to complete his education. From thereon in, we follow in detail the story of Taekwondo from Choi’s experiences of WW II, to the bitter Korean civil war to the war waged between the ITF and WTF Taekwondo organisations. No detail is spared as we learn the lengths to which Choi would reach to keep control of his beloved ITF, the political upheaval of Korea and the blind corruption that has plagued the martial art.
Alex Gillis has written a book that as well as being an essential biography of Taekwondo is a gripping thriller as we finally learn the details of General Choi’s life. Several times we read about Choi’s brushes with death and with the Korean CIA on his case, it is a wonder he managed to live into the 21st Century. What is also quite shocking is the shear corruption and greed associated with Taekwondo as Gillis tells us, “I am stuck on the path of Courtesy, which instructors in small gyms around the world know well but which is largely ignored by Tae Kwon Do’s leaders.” When we say our five tenets of Taekwondo at the beginning of every lesson, one wonders how some of the men in charge of Taekwondo have had the nerve to ask people to recount these values when they have been involved in assassination plots, fraud and sometimes ending up in prison themselves. Gillis has researched his book to perfection as we are given fascinating insights into the men of Taekwondo which would be impossible for the ordinary Taekwondo-ist to have access to.
The history of Taekwondo is rightly entitled ‘A Killing Art’ as it was forged at a time when the martial art was used on the battle fields of Korea and Vietnam by the military and embroiled in the various dictatorships to plague both South and North Korea. This book is essential reading for anyone entering the dojang and a cracking good read for anyone interested in martial arts or sport of any kind. Buy it, read it!
