Kuk Sool Won
국술원Korean system by Suh In-hyuk; the curriculum rests on three branches, but the claim to a court family lineage is disputed.
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South KoreaCharacter & Origin
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About Kuk Sool Won
Kuk Sool Won is a Korean system put together by Suh In-hyuk. The year 1958, when he first used the name kuk sool and began teaching, is commonly confused with 1961, when the organization itself was established; both are given as the founding year, even though each means something different. The curriculum rests on a threefold division of Korean martial arts: tribal, Buddhist monastic, and court arts. The organization further cites five inherited books — Yu Sool, Kwon Sool, Yu-Kwon Sool, Whahl Buhp on healing, and Hyuhl Buhp on pressure points.
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The family lineage on which the system relies is, however, disputed. According to the organization it was passed to Suh by his grandfather, Suh Myung-duk, an alleged instructor at the Korean royal court, and the tradition is said to reach back sixteen generations. But in a lawsuit conducted in the United States in 1997, it was claimed that the story was fabricated and that the grandfather was not a member of the court; Suh's first wife stated that he invented the history only in America, where it could not be verified. The court lineage is therefore the organization's claim, not a documented fact. The American part of the history is, by contrast, unambiguous. Suh flew into Los Angeles on the eleventh of September 1974, founded the World Kuk Sool Association in San Francisco in February 1975, and moved the headquarters to Houston in October 1991. From there the system spread to dozens of countries.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.