Talk:Choi Hong-hi

Untitled
This lunar calender thing should be deleted from this page, and made into a new page. I also celerbrate my birth day according to the lunar calender. It would be the case for many Koreans or asians.

This page displays nothing about Choi Hong Hi's life or death, and is very bias against him. I think this page needs alot of work.--Tkdbee 21:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
Is it just me or does this article seem to have a very clear bias against General Choi Hong Hi? And with not a single sitable reference, unfortunately I'm not up to the task of replacing the article myself allthough it clearly needs to be replaced by something more unbiased. (I myself have studyed ITF TKD so would be biased in other directions) Doctus 02:57, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Doctus. General Choi Hong Hi studied up II Dan in Shotokan in just a few years time, and if there are doubts on these, then please provide the necessary references. There has been a lot of discussion about the differences between ranks in the S.Korean Army and the US Army, but no mention has been made of his imprisonment by the Imperial Japanese Army for standing up against them (and the fact that he was teaching his new art to the other inmates). No mention has been made of the fact that he developed the Chongs (patterns) of Taekwondo. The General had developed the art into what it is today, and was twice the President of the Korea Taekwondo Association. Please refer to the "encyclopedia of Taekwondo" that he had compiled. Yours sincerely, Sam Stephen, II Dan, UTI Taekwondo.

Sam, the old name for patterns was Hyung, not Chong. Hyung was Korean for the word Kata. Today ITF calls them as Tul. Choi Hong Hi only developed his private, personal organization which he called the ITF. He did not develop Taekwondo as known by the majority of the world.

What you have to remember is that Choi Hong Hi was a co-founder of the Oh Do Kwan. This Kwan was a split of from Chung Do Kwan. Choi was given "honorary" Dan (black belt) by the Chung Do Kwan president, Son Duk Song. A short time later, an article appeared in the main Seoul newspaper where Son Duk Song denounced Choi and striped him of that "honorary" 4th Dan.

Many Taekwondo Grandmaster's in Korea were way more senior than Choi. The Chung Do Kwan was around over 10 years before the Oh Do Kwan was even founded!

Choi claims to be the father of Taekwondo, then the founder of Taekwondo are all self promotion and should not be allowed here. The founding of Taekwondo was a larger effort by many great men, not the work of one ego driven man.

In reality, Choi was not the creator of the Chang-Hon Hyngs. That honor goes to Nam Tae Hi and Han Cha Kyo. These were the martial artist who figured out the Oh Do Kwan Hyungs to replace the Japanese Pyong-Ahn Hyung. Choi just added his own twisted version of mind control via cultural propaganda using Korea's deep addiction to anything Confucious.

"In reality, Choi was not the creator of the Chang-Hon Hyngs. That honor goes to Nam Tae Hi and Han Cha Kyo" You are half right Han Cha Kyo and Bok Man Kim created most of the patterns in Malasia 1963 Nam Tae Hi was in Vietnam at this time. Rhee ki Ha and Park Jung Soo were brought there to assist in the pattern development alsoSaboem 22:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Did you know the Oh Do Kwan still exist in Korea, today? Do you know the name of the patters the Oh Do Kwan helped create and endorses as part of Taekwondo curriculum? --Bigzilla 03:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I have studied ITF TKD since the early eighties, and have attended several international instructors courses with the general, as well as another KATU seminar with him. I also attended a seminar by Choi Jung Hwa shortly before his father died. Although I have always had problems with some of the general's confucian idealism and been somwhat of an odd man out in the USTF/ITF organization (they really don't like you thinking for yourself too much), the article on the general is such a one sided smear attempt, that I can't believe that it has been allowed to exist in its present form without some kind of balance included in the text. Whoever wrote it would seem to be a very insecure person with an axe to grind. Gary MorriS

I have many years of ITF teaching and training behind me and frankly some of the opinions you protray as fact are quite insulting they are so biased KMurray INTA

After all the edits do you still consider this article biased?

It disturbs me how blatantly inaccurate this article and any other page citing that General Choi "founded" Tae Kwon Do are, yet they still persist. Chung Do Kwan, the first Tae Kwon Do school (or what would come to be known as Tae Kwon Do), was founded in 1944 by Won Kuk Lee. General Choi was his student. That can be compared to one of Gichin Funakoshi's students claiming all responsibility for Shotokan Karates development.

I fully intend to correct this. - J.C., 1st Degree Black Belt, Chung Do Kwan Quietmartialartist 01:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

A critical element omitted in the article about General Choi's life relates to his defection to North Korea and his vigorous public support of North Korean-style communism. While this aspect of General Choi's life makes many of his devotees uncomfortable, it is certainly real and needs to be addressed, especially in regard to how he putatively placed the International Taekwon-do Federation at the disposal of North Korea. Another omitted element in the article is presentation of any evidence General Choi was an expert martial artist. High-ranked Karate-ka in 1950's South Korea who actually saw General Choi practice noted he appeared novice-level - "like a green belt", as some said. And of course there is the concern (referenced by others in this section) General Choi did very little to "create" a new martial art - in fact, many would argue the patterns used in the ITF are a product of other minds and are in any event very, very closely rtelated to Shotokan patterns.

To the person above, would it be true to say that you study WTF? Do you have a reference of your own for 'like a green belt.' This sounds like the standard propaganda used by both ITF and WTF.

After some initial editing for Wikipedia style, I have read through the article and believe that it satisfies NPOV as it currently stands. I also note that the article has received only sparse editing over the last few months, so I assume that no one sees (lack of) NPOV as a current problem for this article. Thus, I am removing the NPOV tag. I encourage anyone editing this article (from this point on) to provide detailed references for material that they add, and also to maintain a neutral tone in writing. I will be going through the article in due course to remove unverified material and add reliable references as I am able. Janggeom 15:38, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand that you may be putting the information backup when you have references but was it necessary to delete all the facts (aka his early life) and leave the controversial stuff, such as Hong Hi being 'dishonourable'? I would say this article should be NPOV again because it is back to how it was a year ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.210.100.22 (talk) 13:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I understand your concern. I had reservations against deleting such large amounts of content as well, but in the end decided that it was for the better—with the understanding that similar detail will be restored in the future, whether by myself or others, but next time with solid references. Choi is a very controversial figure, and the nature of Wikipedia means that anyone is free to run through the article making frivolous edits or else flagging anything that he/she doesn't like, even if the information may actually be factual (just without references provided yet). As I mentioned in an earlier comment (below), I haven't had as much time to work on this article as I would have liked, but my aim is to rebuild the article with solid referencing so that it is a better Wikipedia article and, thus, less open to dispute.
 * I have not checked the state of the article as it was a year ago, but I would want to see cold, hard evidence for the claim that it is now in the same state again and that this is necessarily justification for adding an NPOV tag (or any other tag, for that matter). I am now looking at the sentence you are concerned about: "Choi is widely credited with starting the spread of taekwondo internationally by stationing South Korean taekwondo instructors around the world, but is also widely claimed (through omission or explicitly) to be either an unimportant, or even dishonourable,[1] figure in taekwondo history." This sentence expresses both positive and negative claims about Choi, to a roughly similar magnitude, so in principle I would consider it neutral. Indeed, if there were only positive things written about Choi in this article, I believe that would be an NPOV problem, since I am well aware of many people with negative views of him.
 * If you are in the pro-Choi camp (as it sounds like you might be), I encourage you to help this article along by adding factual positive statements with solid references. Likewise, if anyone reading this should be anti-Choi, feel welcome to add factual negative statements with solid references. I aim to help build up this article again in the same way (though I consider myself neutral towards Choi, so I will be adding both positive and negative information as long as I can establish that it is factual). Janggeom (talk) 10:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

To my fellow Wikipedia contributors (on this article on Choi Hong Hi): please read the Neutral point of view policy if you are not already familiar with it. I believe this will save us all a lot of time in wasted debate that could be better put to improving the article. Thank you. Janggeom (talk) 11:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It really helps when we conform to Wiki policy. I think what you just did was excellent! Bigbird6 (talk) 15:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Most of the stuff that was on the article before seams to come from Choi's biography - http://www.itf-information.com/information02.htm However being a university student I know that referencing from one source is a bad idea. Any thoughts on how much of this to include? 87.194.201.212 (talk) 11:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I would suggest caution. If you want to add things from Choi's biography (I have been adding things from his hard copy, published biography, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing), I would suggest considering it from a neutral point of view to help you decide whether to include it or not. This is not to say that anything pro-Choi is necessarily true or untrue (and vice versa for anything anti-Choi), just that I think most people would agree that Choi's biography is significantly biased as it stands. I think there is valuable information in Choi's biography, but that we must be careful when adding things to this article from it (and likewise with anything anti-Choi). Does the information seem plausible? Do other, credible sources corroborate the information? One of the reasons that I suggest caution is simply so that people don't waste their time adding things (in good faith) which then just get deleted due to not being referenced properly, or because they violate NPOV. For an article on someone as controversial as Choi, we have to exercise just that bit more care. Janggeom (talk) 13:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The first edition of his biography was written just before the seperation of WTF/ITF, so I see no reason for it to be biased in the same way a modern secondary source would be. It should espically be free of any political bias. http://www.amazon.com/Taekwon-do-self-defence-Hong-Hi-Choi/dp/B0006BXKLE 86.131.219.159 (talk) 17:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I can see your line of reasoning, but I do not believe that we can necessarily assume Choi's biography to be unbiased, even if the version used comes from before the ITF-WTF division. The political situation around Tae Kwon-Do was already complex before 1955, let alone 1966 (ITF founding) or 1973 (WTF founding). The ITF-WTF division might not have occurred yet, but this does not mean that other political forces (and thus, reasons for publishing a biased account of events) were not already in existence. To reiterate, I suggest caution when adding to this article from Choi's biography or any other source that might be seen as strongly biased. Janggeom (talk) 15:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Good work on the editing. I think this article is finally balanced (from an ITF/WTF viewpoint) with full references. 143.210.53.56 (talk) 12:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Article improvement
I have started working to try to improve this article. Choi is a controversial figure in a martial art plagued by political issues, so writing about him in a neutral way could be difficult, but hopefully we can end up with a solid Wikipedia article despite the controversies. Being neither ITF- nor WTF-affiliated, my perception is that Choi is less important than the ITF make him out to be, but also more important than the WTF make him out to be. Janggeom 14:52, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I have not had as much time to research and edit this article as I would have liked over the last few months. Some parts of the article have been unsourced for some time and, as no one else has made the effort to locate sources and I have not had the time to do so, I have deleted them all. To avoid further problems, I encourage everyone editing this article to rigorously provide sources for any additions they might make. Thank you. Janggeom (talk) 15:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Over the next few weeks I intend to add more about Choi Hong Hi with sources. I believe that this article is currently too short and needs more unbiased information based on recorded facts. Chaotixnz (talk) 17:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Choi is not regarded as founder
Taekwondo founder was unclear. many form of TKD based on Song Duk-ki's Taek Kyon. some korean newspaper said, He was not a founder. He just 'taekwondo' name maker. He did not exclusive work for TKD. He was a korea army general.Manacpowers (talk) 04:25, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that the situation about the founding of taekwondo is not clear. The article does not say that Choi was undisputedly the Founder of Taekwondo, but that many people regard him as such—and that is a fact. One only needs to look up any ITF source to verify that. I agree that Choi appears to have been responsible (in large part, at least) for bringing forth the name 'taekwondo,' and in that context might be called 'name maker' (although this is an unusual phrase in English). I am not clear what you are trying to say when you write, "He did not exclusive work for TKD." Please specify exactly what you mean. Thank you. Janggeom (talk) 15:08, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I forgot to mention: if you are going to be working on this article, please take the time to ensure that your contributions are grammatically correct and free of spelling errors. Please also ensure that you provide references for your additions. You have given Choi the title of 'name maker' but have not provided a reference in this article for that claim. Thank you. Janggeom (talk) 15:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Poltical life of Choi Hong Hi and Taekwondo
There are various sources in the Wikipedia article that briefly discuss involvement of Choi Hong Hi in the 1961 Korea coup (Guardian Obituary) and the nytimes obituary also has a brief section on the political the reasons why Choi Hon Hi decided to move the ITF headquarters to Canada. Are there more reliable sources on these subjects? If so should these be included? What other factual aspects of his life should be included? Chaotixnz (talk) 18:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * As the opening paragraphs declare that SK/WTF are often critical of Choi, would it not be an idea to say why? Choi IS considered the founder of TKD by many (he was the one who thought up the name!), rightly or wrongly. However the3 page says little, if anything about his introduction of ITF TKD to North Korea in later years (the reason why many SK/WTF sources criticise him) and his son's arrest for allegedly being involved in a plot to kill the SK president. It might also mention the subsequent break-up of ITF following his death 88.156.42.247 (talk) 17:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Recommendation for article protection - July 2009
Due to the subject's controversial nature, this article is the target of significant abuse or, in good faith, enthusiastic but uninformed editing. I believe that this article should be protected, at some level, if any consistent improvement is to occur. As a starting point, I am making this recommendation informally here for discussion. Janggeom (talk) 22:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * For the record, a third of a year has now passed with no expressions of interest in serious, consistent improvement of this article. Janggeom (talk) 22:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Two thirds of a year have now passed with no expressions of interest in serious, consistent improvement of this article. I have been monitoring this article, and although the vandalism appears to have decreased, the article is still subject to people adding material that is likely to be inflammatory, such as the recent emphasis on Korea having been under Japanese rule when Choi was born. Janggeom (talk) 12:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Article so neutral that almost nothing is left
I understand that there were several issues with the lack of neutrality of the article. However, the current state of the article is also not acceptable. The reader is left wondering, why was Choi Hong Hi exiled from Souch Korea? What did he do in his years in Canada? Was he living in North Korea afterwards? etc.

I know that neutrality is important and difficult, but leaving the articles lacking after stripping them of all controversy is also not good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.245.100.11 (talk) 20:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Please feel welcome to contribute to the article by adding appropriately-written material and, of course, providing reliable references for what you have added. Janggeom (talk) 13:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I was coming here to say the exact same thing. This article is utterly unacceptable in its current state. It is a biographical article about a person's life, yet says absolutely nothing about one of the most important events in his life, namely his exile! A brief passing mention that he moved after exile is completely insufficient. It doesn't answer the obvious question as to why he was exiled, and who imposed that upon him. If anything, the article fails NPOV completely by sweeping under the rug those facts. And to respond to a request about just that with a "feel free to add it" is obnoxious. If the person came here to ask the question, clearly they are seeking that knowledge, so telling them to add it is insulting. If you have any knowledge about these facts and are leaving it out for whatever reason, then it is you who should feel free to add it, not the person making the reasonable request. oknazevad (talk) 05:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * All Wikipedia contributors are encouraged to contribute appropriately. Personal attacks are not allowed. If, in your view, the article is "utterly unacceptable in its current state," please feel welcome to edit it yourself (following Wikipedia guidelines and policies) or take this issue up with any of the three Wikipedia project groups in which this article (through the work of several contributors) is currently rated C class. You might wish to study the subject, the editing history of this article, and everything posted on the article's talk page before commenting further. Janggeom (talk) 13:15, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Exactly the response I expected. Don't lecture me about Wikipedia procedures, I've been around here for almost ten years. The point remains that this article is is in clear need of additional information, but I don't know the answers to the questions the article leaves unanswered. There is nothing wrong with asking on the talk page for a knowledgable editor to add that information (indeed, that's part of what they're for; for editors to make requests for additional information and compile a to do list). To just respond with "why don't you add it" is dismissive and rude.There is no other word for it. I have looked through the edit history and this talk page, and all I can conclude is that it is contentious as to the reasons, and that some may be embarrassed be them. Which is exactly why omitting them fails NPOV; it serves to hide negative information. Not within Wikipedia policy at all. So as it stands, the article should be downgraded in assessment to start class at best, and tagged for lacking neutrality. oknazevad (talk) 16:38, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Why is he titled General?
From all the sources Choi reached the rank of Major-General (ie a 2-star general). Although in spoken address, a 2-star general may be addressed as general, in written address (at least in English) he should always be titled Major-General, because the term General is reserved only for a full general (ie 4-stars or above) in writing. Koreans like to think of themselves as courteous and modest, so why did Choi and his followers exaggerate his army rank in writing? There is an astronomical difference in the responsibilities and powers of a Major-General (a divisional commander) and a full General (an army commander). Choi had never attained the rank of General and should not be titled as such. 86.178.163.150 (talk) 22:52, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

English usage of the name
Article moved from "Choi Hong Hi" to "Choi Hong-hi" (good faith contribution): "Choi Hong Hi" is the established English usage of the name (over several decades), and is how the subject used his own name in his publications. WP:NC-KO indicates that the hyphenated and lower-case usage should be applied "If there is no personal preference, and no established English spelling"—neither of which is the case here. Janggeom (talk) 14:42, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Janggeom It seems like it would be no problem to change the name to Choi Hong-hi. Even some great chinese masters like Wong Fei-hung are written with a hyphen. Here you can see General Choi written as "Choi Honghi":
 * https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/taekwondo/images/c/c0/Choi_Taekwondowon.JPG/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1389?cb=20171128001503 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:810B:43C0:396C:D9D6:538B:381B:7EA (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
 * static.wikia.nocookie.net/taekwondo/images/c/c0/Choi_Taekwondowon.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20171128001503 (if the link doesnt work, try this one, its the same foto but smaller:
 * https://itfphilippines.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/choi_taekwondowon.jpg.jpg?w=180). Here an other one:
 * https://georgevitale.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/image.jpeg?w=625&h=390&crop=1

--Alleingänger (talk) 18:38, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

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Hong Hi Choi learned Taekkyeon?
Can someone verify this book? Is there really such mention of Hong Hi Choi learning Taekkyeon? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bearberserk (talk • contribs) 16:08, 16 January 2019 (UTC) I'm told that the first 5 Gwan/gym became 9 Gwan/gym, which united to become Taekwondo in 1960's. This means Chang Moo Kwan's Gwonbub was a significant factor in Taekwondo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bearberserk (talk • contribs) 16:23, 16 January 2019 (UTC)