- George Chung
- Nov 18, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Nov 26, 2024
“There are, more or less, three kinds of people in the world. There are those who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen and there are those folks who so often say, ‘What happened?’”
Although Jhoon Goo Rhee spoke those words to me nearly 30 years ago, they might just as well have been said yesterday because they’re set in stone in my mind. Rhee was most certainly the kind of man who made things happen. In his 86 years, he made so many things happen — important things, things that have affected millions of people — that it puts him firmly in the company of the greatest masters in martial arts history.
Rhee passed away on April 30, 2018. He died, according to his daughter Dr. Meme Rhee, of complications from post-herpetic neuralgia. His passing represents the end of an era in American martial arts history — as he is credited with not only bringing taekwondo to the United States but also being instrumental in the cultivation and development of many aspects of the martial arts we take for granted.
I was fortunate to meet and befriend grandmaster Rhee when I was in my mid-20s. There are many other people who knew him longer, who knew him better and who had more time with him, but few people have so deeply affected why I practice the martial arts, how I teach and what I know about being a person who seeks to make things happen.
After looking back on the career of Jhoon Rhee, I wrote this article to outline five lessons derived from his life, things that he used to teach and inspire others and that we can refer to as we move forward on our own journeys.
Lesson 1: Vision, Knowledge, Character and Commitment Are More Valuable Than Money
Rhee came to the United States from war-torn South Korea in 1957 with $46 in his pocket. He was spared what likely would have been a tragic death only because a truce was signed to end the Korean War.
That happened just days before he was to be deployed as an officer in a conflict where officers had a 70-percent casualty rate. When he immigrated, he had enough funds to buy a bus ticket, a cot at the YMCA and a couple of meals.
What he also possessed, though, was the knowledge needed to use his martial arts training to set goals, to persevere when times got tough, and to keep one’s mind and body sharp and ready should opportunity come calling.
As we now know, opportunity did come calling for Jhoon Rhee. It left him with a life vigorously lived, deep friendships and accomplishments that would shape the martial arts community.
Many times during my own life, when money was tight, I thought of Rhee coming to the States with so few financial resources but with his knowledge, conviction, character and passion to share what he knew. Today — just like in the 1950s when Rhee arrived in San Marcos, Texas — every talented and committed martial arts practitioner regardless of style can still draw on Rhee’s example to fuel his or her own dreams.
Rhee made plenty of money during his 86 years, but it was how he carried himself that serves as a model for us, especially when we have few financial assets save for conviction and character. Like him, we can rise from humble roots and use the martial arts to start a lifelong career.
Lesson 2: Friendships Are Important
During his life, Rhee made many friends. While sharing his martial arts knowledge, he met and then befriended Bruce and Linda Lee; Chuck Norris; Muhammad Ali; five decades of U.S. presidents, senators and representatives; Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Jack Anderson; and plenty of other Washington movers and shakers. And then there are the martial arts leaders and the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who came to know and admire him.
His relationship with Bruce Lee was cut short by Lee’s unfortunate death at 32 — but not before the two had met many times, trained together, shared insights and formed a close bond.
It was Lee who helped Rhee get a publishing deal with Black Belt’s book division and build a friendship with Black Belt founder Mito Uyehara. Lee also connected Rhee with Sir Run Run Shaw of Shaw Brothers Studios in Hong Kong, which resulted in Rhee starring in two martial arts films.
Rhee and I once worked on a project together, along with Los Angeles martial arts teacher Fariborz Azhakh. It was just after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and we had launched the Acts of Kindness project to allow martial arts schools around the globe to record their students’ kind acts into a database.
It was the first website of its kind in the world. Rhee’s chosen job was to seek political help to get September 11 declared National Acts of Kindness Day by Congress. As he was reaching out to friends in Congress, I phoned him to ask if Norris might help us.
The conversation went like this:
Me: “Master Rhee, can we get Mr. Norris to help us with this?”
Rhee: “Yes, I think we could do that, but first I will have to put him in a position where he cannot say no.”
Me: (laughing) “How do you do that?”
Rhee: “Tom, I want you to remember that if you ever really want someone to help you with something, you would be wise to do something for them that’s so important to them, so meaningful, that when you eventually ask them for help, they simply can’t refuse you.”
I remember. From that point on, I’ve tried to give friends and people I wanted to work with something of value, a contribution to something that’s important to them, rather than simply hope for a “yes” when I need to ask them for a favor. I regard it as a Jhoon Rhee–inspired practice of martial arts mastery.
In fact, Rhee made it his life’s work to give to others, and as a result, he made and kept many friends and got plenty of help whenever he asked. It’s a lesson that’s as relevant today for the aspiring master of the martial arts as it was in 2001.
By the way, the Acts of Kindness website cataloged more than a quarter million acts in 2002. The project was taken over by my student, martial arts teacher Brian Williams of Reno, Nevada, who has served as a catalyst for millions of acts of kindness performed by schoolchildren and their teachers all over the nation.
See his work at thinkkindness.org.
Lesson 3: Marketing That Matters, Matters
Jhoon Rhee became well-known in Washington, D.C., for many reasons, one of which was his early marketing efforts. When he opened his first school there in 1962, he embarked on a letter-writing campaign aimed at the ambassadors who were serving in the city.
Rhee declared that he not only could teach their children taekwondo but also could help them make A’s and B’s in their academic studies. At the same time, he placed regular two-column ads in the Washington Post that, according to Rhee’s son Chun Rhee, “made the phone ring off the hook.”
But Rhee’s marketing genius shone brightest when he decided to produce and run a series of TV commercials for his schools on local stations. The memorable tag lines came when his two youngest children, Chun and Meme, then 5 and 4, would say, Meme first, “Nobody bothers me,” after which her big brother would chime in, “Nobody bothers me, either!”
The theme music for the commercials, written by a soon-to-be-legendary guitarist named Nils Lofgren (the guitarist for Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen), can still be hummed by longtime D.C. residents.
One commercial was recently used in the TV show The Americans, a spy thriller set in the early 1980s. It played on a television in the background of a scene — and for nearly every Washingtonian in the know, it harkened back to a time when you couldn’t watch a local station without hearing about Jhoon Rhee’s schools. Those commercials were probably the first of their kind to promote the martial arts and certainly the first to promote the arts as a tool for the prevention of bullying.
Rhee knew that marketing mattered, and his advertising focused on things that mattered to parents. He loved inspiring young people to be studious, knowledgeable, honest and honorable. He also knew that one had to spend money to make money and that good advertising was creative and consistent.
Rhee made marketing for his schools that mattered to prospective students in his town, and he advertised with catchy phrases and jingles that people remembered. There isn’t a martial arts school owner in America who wouldn’t benefit from his strategies, who wouldn’t derive better results from investing in promotion, engaging in more frequent marketing and making simple yet substantive claims that can be backed up with results.
You can watch some of those legendary ads on YouTube by typing “Jhoon Rhee Commercials” into the search box.
Lesson 4: Adversity Can Be the Mother of Invention
For many years, Rhee promoted martial arts tournaments in his adopted hometown of Washington. Tournament fighters who went on to become legends — including Rhee students Jeff Smith and John and Pat Worley, as well as pioneers like Joe Lewis, Mike Stone and Pat Burleson — attended and won at these events, establishing themselves as the toughest fighters of the day.
At one of them in 1969, Pat Worley took a vicious kick to the face and suffered a broken cheekbone. Rhee was so upset that he started experimenting with protective gear to make the sport safer. Thus was born foam-covered sparring gear — dubbed the Safe-T-Chop, Safe-T-Kick, Safe-T-Face and Safe-T-Chest — which Rhee patented and started producing.
A little-known component of this product line was the Safe-T-Butt, which Rhee devised to protect his children’s rear ends while they learned to ride skateboards.
Then, as now, things don’t always go right — or might even be undeniable tragedies. However, they often have contained within them seeds of opportunity, invention and innovation.
Following Rhee’s lead, any of us who can recall the story of Worley’s injury and his teacher’s ambitious solution might be able to inspire ourselves to devise creative solutions that can turn negatives into positives. Jhoon Rhee did it more than once in his career.
Lesson 5: Contemplation Is Useful, But Action Is Divine
My favorite Jhoon Rhee quote is this: “If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then an action is worth 1,000 pictures.” This notion is what made Rhee the martial artist he was. He knew how to take action. He was a master of getting things done. Never much of a passive observer, he liked to throw himself into projects.
When he decided to open schools, he hired talented people to teach and manage them, and he refined the curriculum and the enrollment process in ways that are still used in martial arts schools.
When he determined that sparring and competition would be safer if combatants wore protective gear, he started a gear company. When he ran tournaments, he filled the event centers, then filled the ranks of competing athletes with martial artists who would become the era’s greatest fighters. When television came calling, he facilitated some of America’s first televised full-contact karate matches.
Example: One of Rhee’s top students, the legendary Jeff Smith, fought on the televised undercard of The Thrilla in Manila, the epic third and final battle between boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Smith fought Karriem Allah in front of a pay-per-view audience of 50 million.
Rhee combined his love of music and martial arts training to create the first American-based musical forms, which he called “martial ballet.” Not only did he use classical music to accompany his forms choreography, but he also wrote poetry to accompany some of the routines.
When he committed himself to teaching members of Congress, he showed up at the Rayburn House gym across from the Capitol Building for more than 30 consecutive years — and taught hundreds of politicians for free, doing the groundwork of spreading martial arts awareness and goodwill.
When Rhee decided he could help other school owners with business management, curriculum design and teaching philosophy, he crisscrossed the nation, giving three-day seminars that inspired a wave of unprecedented professionalism in the martial arts industry.
Clearly, Jhoon Rhee was a man of continuous action, and that provides a fine lesson for all martial artists today. His “an action is worth 1,000 pictures” philosophy is one worth remembering — and putting into action. He wasn’t one for waiting around to see what might happen; he liked to make things happen. We all would be better off doing more of that.
