Tae Soo Do is a name that has been used over the years by both the

Taekwondo Taekwondo (; ; ) is a Korean martial art and combat sport involving primarily kicking techniques and punching. "Taekwondo" can be translated as ''tae'' ("strike with foot"), ''kwon'' ("strike with hand"), and ''do'' ("the art or way"). In ad ...

and the

Hwa Rang Do Hwa Rang Do (), also known as "The Way of the Flowering Knights", is a comprehensive Korean martial art that was developed in the 1960s by Joo Bang Lee and his brother Joo Sang Lee. It has multiple areas of focus, including stand-up fighting wi ...

communities. In relation to Taekwondo, it was the name that some major schools in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

agreed to call their

martial art Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practiced for a number of reasons such as self-defence; military and law enforcement applications; competition; physical, mental, and spiritual development; entertainment; and the pres ...

systems due to reactions to controversies within the Taekwondo communities in the early 1960s. In relation to Hwa Rang Do, Tae Soo Do is the name of their introductory program to help students develop their fundamentals and help prepare them for their training in

. Modern day Tae Soo Do/ Hwa Rang Do has no connection with Taekwondo and one should not be mistaken for the other.

Previous Use in Relation to Taekwondo

In 1961, the name Taekwondo was temporarily dropped by members of the Taekwondo community due to controversies that arose between various schools and practitioners. In response to these controversies, several of the schools choose to change the name of their art to Tae Soo Do and The Korea Tae Soo Do Association submitted its documented to the Ministry of Education on September 22, 1961. A general in the Korean military and a predominant member of the Taekwondo community,

Choi Hong Hi Choi Hong-hi (; 9 November 1918 – 15 June 2002) was a South Korean Army general, and martial artist who was an important figure in the history of the Korean martial art of Taekwondo, albeit controversial due to his introduction of tae ...

, was unhappy with this change and in 1965, he succeeded in changing the name of the art back to Taekwondo with the reformation of The

Korean Taekwondo Association Korea Taekwondo Association (; KTA), originally the Korea Tang Soo Do Association (1961),Park, S. H. (1993): About the author. In H. H. Choi: ''Taekwon-Do: The Korean art of self-defence'', 3rd ed. (Vol. 1, pp. 241–274). Mississauga: Internatio ...

. Today, the name Tae Soo Do is no longer used by Taekwondo practitioners or schools. Very few people who practice Taekwondo today will recognize the name except for its modern use with the Hwa Rang Do community. In the west, the art was always referred to as "Tae Kwon Do" (or "Taekwondo", the western form of the name), due to that the controversies that happened in Korea during the early 1960s never made their way over to the United States aside from a very select few, who chose to watch eastern culture and events closely in order to keep traditions alive and accurate.

Modern Use in Relation to Hwa Rang Do

Today, the name Tae Soo Do (Way of the Warrior Spirit, ) refers to a martial art program created in 1990 by the World Hwa Rang Do Association as a beginners program to the martial art system Hwa Rang Do. The World Hwa Rang Do Association decided to use the name because functionally it expressed what they were working to achieve with the students who participate within the program and since it had been rejected outright by General Choi and the Taekwondo community decades earlier, they didn't see an issue using it.

References

South Korean martial arts {{martialart-stub