Friday, September 22, 2006

Exclusive Interview with Sang H. Kim :: Part 3

The following is the third in a series of excerpts from an exclusive interview with Sang H. Kim, director of the martial arts action movie, Zen Man.

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Q: Tell us a little about your martial arts background, especially before you came to the US.

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 Camp Walker in Daegu. Meeting American GIs sparked my interest in Western culture. I was eager to come to America but had to finish my military service first.

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 Zen Man.

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.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Exclusive Interview with Sang H. Kim :: Part 2

The following is the second in a series of excerpts from an exclusive interview with Sang H. Kim, director of the martial arts action movie, Zen Man.

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Q: This is your first movie, but you've had a lot of experience in front of and behind the camera, right?

SHK: I've produced over a hundred martial arts instructional DVDs and documentaries and I've made a few short films for classes and workshops, so I'm familiar with the technical aspects of filming but making a movie has been a great change of pace.Writing the script, designing shots, making storyboards, scouting locations, organizing the crew, auditioning actors, supervising the editing and music composition are all very complicated in film production, much more so than any other project I've done to date. It's been a great learning experience and I've gotten to work with a lot of knowledgeable and talented people.

Q: Tell us about the martial arts that you used in the film.

SHK: I used a mixture of taekwondo, which has exciting kicking techniques that look impressive on the screen, and my own system called Junsado. In the beginning of the film, the villain injures Han, taking away the use of his left arm. For two years, he trains with only his right arm using a variety of weapons. For many of the film's fight scenes I was limited to using only one arm. I have been fighting all my life with two arms, so it was strange to do everything with one arm for this role. To move as fast and powerfully as the men I was fighting, I had to adjust my stance and footwork and develop a lot of unorthodox fighting skills. So in the movie, Han's fighting method is very strategic and relies on a mixture of kicking techniques and weapons.

Q: That is an unorthodox mixture.

SHK: It is but it works surprisingly well. I wanted to give the audience an idea of how a skilled martial artist can switch gears fluidly, using whatever is necessary for the situation. Han is not as big or as ruthless as some of the villains he faces, but he gets the job done in the end. A true master should be able to adapt to any situation and use what's at hand to prevail.