Taekkyeon

Taekkyeon

Martial artists presenting taekkyeon for Hi! Seoul Festival on April 28, 2007
Also known as	Taekgyeon, T'aekkyŏn
Focus	Mixed
Hardness	Full contact
Country of origin	Korea
Parenthood	Subak
Official website	Several associations

Taekkyeon is a traditional Korean martial art first explicitly recorded during the Joseon Dynasty. Taekkyeon is characterized by fluid, dynamic footwork called "pum balgi" or Stepping-on-Triangles. Taekkyeon has many leg and whole-body techniques with fully integrated armwork. Although taekkyeon primarily utilizes kicking, punching, and arm strikes thrown from a mobile stance and does not provide a framework for groundfighting, it does incorporate a variety of different throws, takedowns, and grappling techniques to complement its striking focus. The martial art is frequently romanized informally as Taekgyeon, Taekkyon, or Taekyun.

The earliest existing written source mentioning Taekkyeon is the book Jaemulbo (also Manmulbo), written by Lee Sung-Ji during the reign of Jeongjo (1776–1800):

I.e. the word is spelled Tak-gyeon, written in Hangul, while the other terms are written in hanja.

Around 1900 Taekkyon was practiced frequently around Hanyang (Seoul), the capital city of the Joseon Dynasty. Song Duk-ki (1893–1987) was critically responsible for conveying the art. In the foreword of his only book, he writes: "It cannot be said for sure when and how taekkyon came into existence, but until the end of the Korean kingdom, certain people did taekkyon together."

Taekkyeon matches were frequent in the late Joseon Dynasty. For example, during the Dano-Festival, a tournament called Gyeollyeon (결련) was carried out. Players who beat five opponents consecutively could take a rest and re-enter the tournament again later.

Taekkyeon is documented as a living martial art in an 1895 book on Korean sports and games.

In the book "Haedong Jukji" by Choe Yeong-nyeon (최영년, Hanja: 崔永年) from 1921, the idu-writing 托肩 is used to represent "Tak-gyeon". The translation of 托肩 is "push-shoulder". However this does not mean that the translation of Taekkyon is "push the shoulder", because idu is just a way to phonetically write pure Korean words with Chinese characters. At the same time, all the arm techniques of taekkyeon are generated from a shoulder movement first, by whipping the entire arm out. When fighting, there are numerous ways Taekkyeon pushes and pulls an opponent by the shoulders. Also in this book, there's a poem and a non-fictional text about Taekkyon, calling it lyrically "flying leg technique" (bi-gak-sul, 비각술, 飛脚術).