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Q: Tell us a little about your martial arts background, especially before you came to the
SHK: I began training when I was four years old. I was the fourth of five brothers, so all of my older brothers were already training in wrestling, judo and hapkido. At first I mimicked their movements and tried to fight with them. My serious training began in middle school as a member of Dalsung Taekwondo team, competing against other middle school teams. In high school, when I was a fourth dan black belt, I was very reckless in my training. I had so much energy and athletic ability that I constantly challenging myself but often I ended up injured. For example, when I was training at a Jidokwan school in Daegu, I was practicing jumping spinning whip kick by kicking a piece of bicycle tire inner tube that I'd hung from the ceiling. It was very high and I tried and tried and finally kicked it but at the same time, I got my foot tangled in the tubing and I landed upside down, hitting my head on the concrete floor. Later, some of my fellow black belts found me and rushed me to the hospital.
Q: Did you ever think about quitting after getting seriously injured like that?
SHK: No, in fact in college I became even more interested in taekwondo and began teaching CID (Criminal Investigation Division) agents at
Q: Is it true that all Korean military personnel are black belts?
SHK: Yes they are. When I was in the military, we woke up at five AM to run. Then we did taekwondo training for an hour and then in the evening we had small group training for combat specific skills. Since I was a special agent in a counterespionage unit, we trained not only in taekwondo but in firearms and lethal hand-to-hand skills. At one point during my service, I was assigned to a prison detail which was a very dangerous job. There were thousands of violent criminals held in an isolated area in the mountains. During that time, my life was threatened many times and I had almost daily opportunities to use my martial arts skills. It was during this time that I began formulating Junsado, which I used extensively in
Q: What is Junsado?
SHK: Junsado is the way you see a conflict and resolve it efficiently. The means include direct and indirect tactics to neutralize or subdue the opponent. Jun means combat, Sa means expert and Do is the way so it is literally The Way of the Combat Expert. It is about finding the right strategy to resolve the given situation.
Q: Why did you use Junsado in Zen Man?
SHK: In many of the scenes, Han fights against multiple assailants at once. He needs strategy to survive. He uses the terrain and takes advantage of range fighting. Junsado has four ranges: neutral, long, medium and short. At long range, he positions himself to manipulate the formation of the assailants to his advantage. At short range, he uses surprise tactics, for example turning his back on an assailant then thrusting to the rear with his wooden sword. He also uses his Ssang Bong (double sticks), which is a style of using two sticks in a symmetrical way that I've developed over the past twenty years. It's a uniquely Korean style, the only Korean art that uses two sticks at the same time.It's very different from Kali or Arnis because it uses two different grips: one straight grip and one reverse grip. This allows you to initiate action with one stick and then accelerate the movement of your body for the second strike and third strike and so on, making it a fast powerful versatile weapon. It's a very unpredictable way of attacking and defending. Well, if you want to see what I mean, watch the movie.
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