Haidong Gumdo (Korean Swordsmanship)
해동검도Korean sword art that has spread since the nineteen-eighties. Practitioners train forms and cutting tests; the claimed origin in the Goguryeo kingdom was rejected by historians and a court.
Quick Facts
South KoreaCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Haidong Gumdo (Korean Swordsmanship)
Haidong gumdo is a Korean sword-fighting art that spread to dozens of countries from the nineteen-eighties onward. Practitioners train with a wooden practice sword, with a blunt steel blade, and, once they reach adulthood, also with cutting bamboo stalks or rolled straw mats; the core of instruction consists of forms called hyeong, supplemented by cutting tests and only limited paired free practice. According to Korean sources, younger students cut paper with a practice blade. The origin of the art is a matter of dispute worth knowing about. Schools associated with the haidong gumdo brand trace their techniques back to the warriors of the kingdom of Goguryeo in the first centuries of our era; both historians and a court record from the nineteen-nineties reject this account. According to Korean sources, the founders Kim Jeong-ho and Na Han-il met each other at a secondary school in Seorabeol, practiced simgeomdo around 1970 and later gicheonmun, and opened their own school in the Seocho district of Seoul in 1982. During a later dispute between the two men, the court found that the art had arisen from sword systems the two had learned themselves, rather than from an inherited ancient tradition. The catalogue therefore lists 1982 as the documented beginning of the school and leaves the earlier dating on the level of traditional lore. Today two main federations stand side by side, one in the line of Kim Jeong-ho and the other in the line of Na Han-il.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.