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Editor's Note: This interview originally appeared in our September 2012 issue. To read the rest of the magazine, be sure to subscribe to Black Belt+ and gain access to our entire digital archive!
At the 2006 Black Belt Hall of Fame Banquet and Reunion, the editors of this magazine gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Soon Ho Lee, the man who led the American Taekwondo Association from 2000, the year his brother Haeng Ung Lee passed away, until 2011, when he handed control of the organization to In Ho Lee.
The ATA was, and still is, probably the largest martial arts organization in the world, with 300,000 members training under 7,000 certified instructors at more than 1,000 schools in the United States alone, plus more in other countries.
To find out why it’s been so successful and to learn where it’s going as it celebrates its 50th anniversary, we linked up with G.K. Lee, eighth-degree black belt and one of the chief masters of the Little Rock, Arkansas–based organization.
—Editor
Taekwondo Talk
Q: Briefly, how did the American Taekwondo Association get started?
A: My brother Haeng Ung Lee came here in 1962; that’s why we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary in 2012. He started a small organization that pulled many martial artists together. Several years later, in 1969, he created the American Taekwondo Association in Omaha, Nebraska, and we’ve been moving forward ever since.
Q: The ATA is often said to be the largest martial arts organization in the world. Why do you think it’s so successful?
A: We teach life skills in addition to martial arts—especially for children. We teach them the right things to do, such as having good manners and respecting others. That’s why a lot of parents and community leaders support us.
Q: On the competition floor today, I noticed a lot of older martial artists. In many organizations, young students quit training before they become adults, but not here. Why do so many people stay with the ATA into their 50s and 60s?
A: It’s because we have different stages for the different levels of development of our students. For younger people, we focus on the physical skills of songahm taekwondo, weapons training and MMA. For people who are a little older, we focus on leadership, as well as health and education. For seniors, we teach things like ki gong breathing exercises and tai chi–style weapons. Our yang-style tai chi has become very popular with our members; it’s one of the reasons people continue their training.
Q: When you say “weapons training,” are you talking about doing forms with traditional weapons or sparring with padded sticks—like I saw today in your tournament?
A: We call the padded-weapons sparring “combat weapons.” You cannot fight with them because they’re designed for safety. We use them so students can learn important skills. For example, one method we use is old-style escrima. In addition to teaching stick fighting, we find that it really helps strengthen the wrists. The best part is, the escrima skills translate to self-defense—if a person is in the kitchen when a home invasion happens, they can pick up a knife and fight off the attackers.
For our traditional weapons training, we focus on the kum, or straight double-edged sword, and the do, which is a curved single-edged sword. The skills come from the Korean art of kumdo.
Q: The ATA seems very open to adding skills and techniques from outside sources, but that’s not true with most organizations. Why are you different?
A: We want what is best for our students. Back in the time of Bruce Lee, most martial arts schools didn’t teach weapons. Empty-hand fighting was enough—until the late 1970s, when everybody wanted to learn weapons. In the 1980s and ’90s, everybody copied taekwondo—kung fu people, karate people, kickboxers and so on. They just added skills they thought were valuable. There are no more secrets in martial arts, so there’s no more reason to be separate from other styles.
Q: The ATA also emphasizes self-defense. Can you explain your implementation of that part of the program?
A: In 1993 in Canyon Country, California, one of our instructors, Veronica Estrada, was killed. We felt so guilty because she was a second-degree black belt and should have been able to defend herself. One of my seniors and I went to Rickson Gracie and asked, “Can you teach us how to escape from a choke?” That’s why we now have the Protech Training Systems, which includes defense against grappling and ground fighting, spontaneous knife attacks and baseball-bat attacks—everything. The defensive skills come from the Korean arts, the Filipino arts and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Q: For the ATA to have a curriculum composed of traditional taekwondo, as well as Brazilian grappling and Filipino weapons, its leadership must have an open mind. Is that true?
A: Yes. The thing to remember is that taekwondo is a martial art. In the olden days, all martial systems had something to do with weapons. The techniques used to be more brutal—breaking arms, using stomp kicks, etc.—because people needed to know that. Then they became arts: taekwondo, hapkido and so on.
Q: Is it accurate to say that in the past there was a comprehensive set of fighting skills for waging war and that pieces of that skill set became separate “do” arts—for example, in Korea, sword skills became kumdo, kicking and punching became taekwondo, and grappling became yudo?
A: That’s true.
Q: And the ATA is trying to reintegrate those skills for the well-being of the student?
A: Yes.
Q: How does MMA fit into the picture?
A: The first stage of martial arts was 50 years ago, when men like Mas Oyama were fighting bulls to get attention—we don’t want to go back to that. We want practitioners of traditional martial arts to get together and cooperate for everyone’s benefit. For example, we would like to organize an annual hanmadang, or martial arts festival. We would invite all traditional people to one place. We hope to start work on this soon in our second 50 years. It will enable us to help smaller organizations and arts that have no place for their students to go. It will help promote traditional values.
MMA gives its people a place to go where they can have a career but lacks the traditional values. We want to keep those values while giving people different things within martial arts they can do. That’s why we try to have parts of the ATA that appeal to different groups of people—like IMS (Integrated Martial Systems), which includes grappling, and Combat Weapons Systems, which features padded-weapons sparring. And we have ATA XMA with Mike Chaturantabut. This way, we can maintain traditional martial arts values in all these areas while MMA continues to grow—without selling our souls. We’d rather sell integrity.
We’ve already begun to reach out to Chinese masters. We believe this can be a bonding experience.
Q: The ATA is established in the United States and South America, and you’re talking about expanding into China and Europe. Is your plan to be in every country that values tradition so people there can have access to a martial arts organization that will preserve the arts?
A: Yes. We’re already talking about organizing a world tournament. We have 1,000-plus schools here, and in South America we have more than 300. Why not get all of them together? It’s a win-win situation for the world.
Coming to America
Born in South Korea, G.K. Lee immigrated to the United States in 1984.
“At that time, I was a fifth-degree black belt in the World Taekwondo Federation, and in tang soo do I had a fourth-degree black belt,” he said. “I also have a background in hapkido, kuk sool and kung fu.”
With that résumé, it’s no wonder the American Taekwondo Association leadership is so open to blending arts.
“I had to have a mixed set of skills because I used to teach on a U.S. Army base, and you cannot teach only one thing there,” explained Lee, who now holds an eighth degree in taekwondo.
Since coming to America, he’s continued his cross-training in, among other things, Japanese swordsmanship with an instructor who’s directly under Yoshindo Yoshihara, an Intangible Cultural Asset designated by the Japanese government.
“I’ve been lucky to meet so many great masters, and they help me continue to improve my skills,” Lee said. “For example, my sword master is the No. 1 sword maker in the world. I train with him whenever I can, most recently this year in San Francisco.”
