Flips and Kicks

Taekwondo Performers from Kukiwon Taekwondo Academy in Seoul. They are such a good school, that they only train black belts. they have 30-some black belts that they train regularly, as well as a large troupe of black belt children. They perform regularly at Gyeongbokgung Palace as part of the "Sparkling Korea" campaign, to improve Korea's global image. here we are, posing with the group.

The women in front were dancers. more than dancers, though, they were performers, jesters, and drummers. They glided and skipped and twirled around and did most of it while drumming.

After the performance, we got a chance to train with one of Kukiwon's black belt instructors. A two-hour lesson, We were sweating and sore at the end of it. "We don't tell our students we love and respect them," the instructor tells us, "I show my students. I show them by make the sweat. I make the sweat, I work for you. This the only way you can show the respect." and believe you me, I was respecting all over the place. You'd never know it'd been raining just an hour before all this. We met at Gwanghwamun Station in order to go together to the taekwondo performance. We got caught on a stoop near the station as rain poured torrentially around us for the next 30 minutes or so. I snapped pictures as poor souls who had to be somewhere trudged or tiptoed through the growing lake that was making its way at our feet. However, the rain stopped and the sun came out, and we all went on our way, the performance went on ontop of wet & muddied pavement, and it turned out to be a lovely sunny day.

In Korean, tae (Hangul: 태, hanja: 跆) means "to strike or break with foot"; kwon (Hangul: 권, hanja:拳) means "to strike or break with fist"; and do (Hangul: 도, hanja: 道) means "way" or "method"; so "taekwondo" is loosely translated as "the way of the foot and fist" or "the way of kicking and punching".