Few figures of twentieth-century Korea generate as much debate as Choi Hong Hi (최홍희). For some, he is the undisputed father of the art that millions practice today. For others, he is a figure whose self-promotion overshadowed the contributions of contemporary masters. This choi hong hi biography tries to move between both extremes, neither sanctifying nor erasing him, to understand why his name remains central seventy years after that 1955 meeting in Seoul.
What follows is a tour through his formation, his military role, the founding of the International Taekwon-Do Federation, and the controversies he carried until his death in 2002. No golden legends, no easy demonization.
01From Hwa Dae to exile: the formative years
Choi was born on November 9, 1918 in Hwa Dae, a small town in what is now North Korea, then under Japanese occupation. As a child he was described as frail and confrontational, which led his father to send him to study calligraphy with master Han Il Dong, who also taught him Taekkyon (택견), a traditional Korean leg game. Although its direct influence on modern Taekwondo is disputed, it shaped his imagery of the native versus the imported.
In 1937 he traveled to Japan to continue his studies. There he came into contact with the Shotokan Karate of Funakoshi Gichin and reached second dan. This fact is key: much of the technique he would later codify has direct roots in Japanese Karate, something that the official ITF narrative preferred to soften for decades. Acknowledging it does not diminish Choi's merit, but it does nuance the story of an art born in cultural isolation.
During World War II he was conscripted into the Japanese imperial army. In 1944, after participating in a Korean resistance movement known as the Pyongyang Student Soldier Incident, he was arrested and imprisoned. Prison, paradoxically, gave him time to train and reflect on a martial system of his own for a Korea that was not yet independent.
02The general and the founding of Oh Do Kwan
Released after the Japanese surrender in 1945, Choi joined the newly created Army of the Republic of Korea. His military career was meteoric: he rose to major general and became one of the most influential officers during the Korean War and the postwar period. This position of power is decisive for understanding the later expansion of Taekwondo.
In 1953 he founded the Oh Do Kwan (오도관), the army gym, where together with Nam Tae Hi he trained soldiers in a system that combined Shotokan Karate, elements of Taekkyon, and his own developments. Oh Do Kwan competed with other civilian kwan of the time: Chung Do Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan, Song Moo Kwan, Ji Do Kwan, and Chang Moo Kwan. The rivalry between these schools, far from anecdotal, explains much of the political tension that would follow.
031955: the name Taekwondo
On April 11, 1955, a committee of notables, military officers, and representatives of the kwan met to choose a unified name for the Korean martial art. Choi's proposal, Taekwondo (태권도), was approved. The choice was not trivial: the term phonetically evoked native Taekkyon and allowed distance from Japanese Karate amid full nationalist reconstruction.
The choi hong hi biography often stops here as if at a clean founding act. The reality is more tangled. Several masters from other kwan have for decades disputed the actual degree of consensus at that meeting, and some maintain that the name was imposed more by Choi's political influence than by technical agreement. What is certain is that the term took hold and displaced competitors such as Tang Soo Do or Kong Soo Do.
The name does not make the art, but it decides who gets to tell it. And in 1955, Choi had the microphones.
04Codification: tuls, sine wave, and the 24 patterns
Choi's most substantive technical contribution was systematization. Between the fifties and seventies he developed the tul (틀), the formal patterns that structure the ITF curriculum. There are twenty-four in total, a number chosen to represent the twenty-four hours of the day, one life set against eternity. Each tul bears the name of a Korean historical figure, from Chon-Ji to Tong-Il.
The other disputed innovation is the so-called sine wave: a vertical undulation of the body intended to generate power through the use of body weight. Introduced in its mature form in the eighties, the sine wave divides opinions even within the ITF world. Its defenders see it as a biomechanical refinement. Its critics consider it inefficient for real combat and a late innovation imposed vertically on schools that already taught in another way.
In 1972 Choi published the Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do, a monumental fifteen-volume work that remains the reference text for the ITF branch. That a single man signed such a systematization is also part of the problem: it consolidated his personal authority over the art.
05The schism: ITF, exile, and North Korea
In 1966, Choi founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation in Seoul, predating World Taekwondo (then WTF), created in 1973 under South Korean sponsorship. The fracture between the ITF and the WT was not only technical, it was political.
At odds with the regime of Park Chung Hee, Choi went into exile in 1972 and moved the ITF headquarters to Toronto. The definitive break came when, in 1980, he led a demonstration mission in Pyongyang, opening the doors of Taekwondo to North Korea. For Seoul it was a betrayal. For Choi, it was a way to keep the art above the divisions of the Korean cold war. The gesture cost him official recognition in the South for decades.
A curious fact: upon his death in 2002, Choi was buried in the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery in Pyongyang, a decision that still fuels debate about where his national loyalty truly lay.
06Legacy and gray areas
Evaluating Choi Hong Hi requires holding several truths at once. Without him, Taekwondo probably would not be called that, nor would it have the curricular structure we know. With him, the art carried a personalism that hindered later unification and left scars between the ITF and WT that are still visible.
His critics point to three recurring issues: the minimization of Karate roots, the imposition of the sine wave on established schools, and a leadership style not given to consensus. His defenders respond with the Encyclopedia, the twenty-four tul, and an international expansion that few retired military officers could match.
An honest biography of the general does not need to pick a side. It needs to understand that modern Taekwondo is partly his creation, and partly a collective response to what he left unresolved.
To go deeper, it is worth contrasting this reading with the trajectories of the other kwan founders and with the parallel history of the Kukkiwon. Only then does the choi hong hi biography stop being a monument and finally become history.