American Hwarang

Today's update begins hundreds of years ago, really, with the foundation of a group called the Hwarang.  In the 5th century, the King of Silla (in what would later become Korea) would recruit young men from good families into an elite group he called Hwarang.  Hwarang means a Flower Knight, a young man who is progressing to adulthood with an added nobility to his already respectable rank. 

The Hwarang left their homes for places of great natural beauty.  There they learned the arts of combat, studied philosophy, and practiced emotional and mental control in these places-- searching for inspiration in the strange, beautiful locales of Korea.  The land and the warrior culture played as a rich muse to them, and through them was developed the tradition of the warrior-intellectuals of Korea. 

Hwarang culture believed a young man should be able to defeat countless enemies in combat, write poetry that could stun royal courts to silence, ride faster than simple men would believe, sing and dance before a crowd, and appreciate and debate the finer points of the great works of philosophy and literature.  

 Hwarang were regarded as the most effective soldiers on the battlefield.

The greatest writers of their time.

And finally, as teachers.

As anyone who has seen a movie set in Asia will know, the cherry-blossoms are an important part of this culture.  And for good reason.  It's at the time of the cherry-blossom festival that my story here begins.

It was the time of year for a change of pace.  I was two-thirds of the way through, an important milestone.  Finished were the months of black coats shivering through white wind.  With the flowering trees, spring was actually starting, and the breeze brought the smell of it.

Anyone who has lived in a place long enough to see it in bloom will recognize immediately the smell of their town in the summer.  You may not even realize it, but when the first spring breeze arrives -- the first time the wind feels soft instead of vicous, anyone will remember--

"...that's right, my world smells like this.  I can't believe I'd forgotten."

So it was here, when the rain was finally refreshing, not icy, that the spring-smell brought what I realized with shock was nostalgia.  I had, in fact, lived here long enough to be able to look back and wistfully remember old times here. 

Spring.

Huh.

I needed a haircut.

Something trendy and Korean.  Something that'll take a little more work each day, but in this part of the world at least, there's no excuse for not looking good.

With spring going all around, it was time for another change-  time to see if all of my martial arts were going to pay off.   

On saturday, I arrived at the Dojang at 8:00 a.m., and had one final practice before joining thirteen other candidates for Taekwondo testing at the Kukkiwon

We all rode out from our school together, through the unbelievably hectic interstates that make up Korea's highway system.  The assistant master drove through the onslaught of traffic.  At one point we were cut off by a car that dove in just a few feet in front of us, screeching on its brakes.  Our car was in the next lane, out of harm's way before I even realized the danger.  No one else seemed even remotely surprised.  I suppose I shouldn't have been either.  As we got closer, we encountered students from our rival school, Yong In Dae, riding ahead of us, pictured above.

 The testing facility was a massive dome, whose stands were a sea of white uniforms.  Imagine going to your favorite sporting event, but the outnumbered audience is on the field, and all the bleachers are full of the athletes. 

 Featured prominently, hanging from the ceiling was the Korean flag.  My teacher (pictured above) explained how I would be tested. 

 First, I would stand before a panel of judges and perform the TaeGuk forms and kicks required, along with all of the other candidates

 Then, candidates would equip themselves with sparring gear and fight two short rounds with another candidate as an opponent, while being graded on their performance.

 Finally, each candidate would be asked to punch his or her way through a board, held by black belts who had already passed the test.

This is the general protocol, but it glossed over the details.
First, the massed ranks pictured performing the forms were young students testing for their junior black belts(black and red).  Hundreds tested at the junior level, testing for their poom belts.  I was testing for a true adult black belt (black).  And only four candidates were testing in the adult, dan, category.
Second, my sparring opponent was not who I had expected.  He wasn't a steely-eyed, military-bound, Bruce-Lee-type.  He wasn't a he at all.  I had been matched up against the only female candidate in the adult level, and the president of my school instructed me beforehand to decrease my power for the fight while still demonstrating all my skill, because that is the expected manner for a male candidate facing a female.
Finally, after watching each other candidate punch through a board, I was fairly confident, and broke mine with ease.  The observing official then commanded the holder double the boards and try again.

The flowering trees were in full bloom as we arrived back at the academy in the warm midday sunshine.  It will be another ten days until I know for certain if I can claim the rank of black belt, I learned as we drove home.  But the master and assistant master of InHa Elite briefed me on (what they considered) my successful performance.

I had complete both forms and all the kicks-- without the speed of some of the other candidates, but with a certainty and power which they told me many Taekwondo practitioners unfortunately lack.

I had shown good skill in my sparring match, being the clear victor.  But I had also showed control of my actions and restraint

And I had easily turned the single and double boards into double and quadruple half-boards.  In this test, at least, I was truly confident in my performance.  I owe a wizened sage of the martial arts in Ames, Iowa a great deal of gratitude for the speed and power of those punches.

While I'm still not certain I will have the official stamp of approval of the Kukkiwon board, I do know that I have learned many things about the martial arts in these eight months of training.  I've learned to fight faster and sharper, and with greater ease and balance than ever before. 

If you look at the Korean flag, you'll notice that their yin-yang symbol isn't black and white like the Chinese variant- it's blue and red.  The blue and red are the two different sides of the human personality: passion and thought.  In the final days before my testing, I was told by my teacher that I am someone who fights with passion.  For this reason, at the insistence of the master, I fought for my school, my belt, my pride, and my future in armor and a headguard that were unquestionably, strikingly, perfectly

Red.

To Combat,

Jeff M. Davis

And happy Easter from the land of the Hwarang.

Teacher?

I've done a lot of talking on here.  I've talked as a traveller about the sights of Korea.  I've talked as a ninja, about the new and interesting ways I daily learn to make badguys' faces go ouchie.  I've even talked as a poet about being inspired by a fantastical land.  But none of those are really my job. 
So this week I'm going to take a little break from all of those and do something Jeff-teacher should've been doing on here long ago:  teach language. 
First of all, let me be frank with everyone.  Every (especially monolingual) English speaker needs to know something that will be absolutely vital to today's lesson:
English
Is
Complicated.
Yes, we've all got it figured out.  And we use it unbelievable amounts every day.  Some of us may even be quite good at it.  I know I aspire to hold that title.  And through a good deal of practicing writing and speaking, I've come to be pretty darn competent at speakin Amurrican.  The problem, however, comes when a student doesn't ask me HOW to make a sentence, but why I phrased it that way.  Here, you know what?  Let me show you

Take this sentence:
I would like to have gotten a black belt by the time I leave.

The subject of this sentence is fairly obvious- I.  the sentence is about me.
There are two nouns in here, time, and black belt.
Verbs?  Now we get into trouble
would like, have gotten, leave.  A sentence describing a single action takes five verbs?  uh oh.
not to mention all the 'to's and 'the's and 'a's with which English loves to garnish such magnificent spreads.

And why do we say "have gotten" and not "have"?
well, one describes the act of acquiring the belt, the completion of training, the other is just a state of being in possession of---
And if you had tried to answer this question in this manner, your 12 year old Korean student's eyes would've glazed over, before rewarding you with a meek "ok"  and returning to her seat.

When you try to put the whole picture together for every sentence, the question of why we phrase things the way we do becomes more and more daunting, as you realize that almost everything you know about English, you just know. 
Great.
Now teach.

Possibly (read: certainly without a doubt) compounding the problem is the inherent vagueness in much of the Korean language.  As with last time, I'll give you an example.  I was studying my Korean textbook with my language exchange partner this weekend, when I came across a sentence whose every word I could translate.  For all the help that did me, the sentence may as well have been in Aramaic.
It read, literally,
Movie like.
I asked my language partner, what does that mean?  She was surprised I couldn't understand, after all, the words were English now.

It means, she told me, like movie.

Like movie?  These two words are insufficient to carry meaning in English, and could mean all manner of things.
I like this movie.
I would like a movie.
I like movies (Korean words are often ambiguous as to singular or plural)
Do you like movies? (there is no subject in the Korean sentence).
I had to supply several sentences in English relating to the topic before a meaning could be discovered (it did in fact mean I like movies)

Of course, English speakers often speak in incomplete sentences (see the game last night?), but this is only in casual conversation.  Textbook Korean is indeed this vague. 
So the next time I curse helping verbs, or the present continuous tense in English, it might be a good reminder for me to again appreciate whether I movie like.

I'd like to make a final note here before signing off.  I recently had an international study brought to my attention that showed Korean students as the single group who graduated with the lowest social skills of all the countries surveyed.  And when you think about it, they never really had a chance at this competition.

• Most of the students I've met, starting at middle school, are in all boys or all girls schools, because having the opposite sex in class detracts from studying
• Students' regulated haircuts and uniforms are to prevent- you guessed it- appearances from distracting from study
• Students in class are conditioned not to take initiative in discussion, but to instead sit passively and note-take
• When offered the choice between training in multiple choice test-taking skills and training in better speaking and writing, the students will choose the test skills (in my experience) because their speaking and writing skills will not get them into a university or a job, their test skills will. 

So essentially a group of students who are actively prevented from learning to talk to the opposite sex, learning to dress and groom themselves independently, learning to speak in class, and learning to speak and write their own ideas at all are being pitted against the western world's students in exactly these categories. 
Are you surprised at all?   Would you go to the Kentucky derby and bet on a fish?  (a consistent individual will have the same answer to those two questions, for the record).
The counter may be made by those who have seen the international reports that Americans are consistently outscored by Koreans on fair globalized, standardized tests- that socializing is nice, but Korean students graduate much better prepared to achieve high-paying jobs.  To everyone who bemoans the diminishing ability of American graduates to keep up with their better educated peers in the East, I offer a single, simple reminder, a third test if you will, to the socially skilled American and the academically skilled Korean

And this test will take place in a job interviewer's office.


If you can't baffle them with your brilliance, bedazzle them with your BS,
Jeff-Teacher