Son Duk-sung

Son Duk-sung, died on 29 March 2011 at Newport Hospital, Newport, RI, United States Of America. He is survived by his daughter Yehjong Son and her husband, Steven G. Cundy and his granddaughter Lahna Son-Cundy.

In 1999, due to differences between the board of directors and the leadership of the WTA regarding who will be the next president, the board of directors decided to leave the association, so they organized a new association, the National Tae Kwon Do Association (NTA). Since the early 1990s, the WTA organization fragmented and the majority of its former members are spread out in more than 26 independent Tae Kwon Do organizations in the United States and Venezuela.

Soon enough he started teaching classes at West Point Military Academy, the Universities of Princeton, New York, Brown and Fordham, the New York State University on Stony Brook, and the YMCA of New Jersey among others. He also established the Tae Han Karate Association, which in 1966, became the World TaeKwon-Do Association.

In 1966 Son Duk-sung endorsed a proposal made by Jae Bock Chung to establish the World Tae Kwon Do Association (WTA), substituting the Tae Han Karate Association created by Son in 1962. Son became president, and at the peak of its existence, the World Tae Kwon Do Association amassed more than 495 schools in the United States, Venezuela and Australia, and it became the largest Tae Kwon Do organization in the United States.

The organization grew fast and in 1965 a group of Korean instructors, some of them ex-students of Son in Korea, established themselves in the country and their first black belts started to promote the martial art in the United States. In 1969, Luke Grande arrives to Venezuela and founded the first Tae Kwon Do Chung Do Kwan School in that country. In 1987, Rod Preble started teaching the martial art in Australia.

In April 1963, Son traveled to the United States of America, where he started to teach Tae Kwon Do or “Korean Karate” as it was called then. His first classes were outdoors at Central Park in Manhattan and at the basement of downtown synagogue in New York City. At the end of 1963 he established regular classes Monday through Friday from 6 to 8pm in his first gym, located at 162 7th corner of 21st street in New York City.

On June 16, 1959, Son, worried about keeping the philosophical principles of the Chung Do Kwan School, published a letter in the South Korean newspaper “Seoul Shimoon”, dismissing a group of advanced students which included Choi, Nam, Uhm among others. This caused a total separation and the exclusion of Duk from all sport organizations in Korea.

“At the end of the fall of 1959, I invited all leaders of the 4 top Kwans to my home. No, Byung Jik represented Song Moo Kwan; Yoon, Kwe-byung represented Ji Do Kwan; Lee, Nam-suk represented Chang Moo Kwan; and Hwang, Ki represented Moo Duk Kwan; while I represented Oh Do Kwan and Chung Do Kwan.”

As result from this meeting, on September 3, 1959, the Korean Tae Kwon Do Association was born. Its first president was Choi Hong-hi, who named Uhm Woon-kyu -in that same year- as new school chief (Kwan Jang) of the Chung Do Kwan School. General Choi was elected president due to his position as general in the Korean Army (under military regime) and for the promise he made to other school chiefs to promote TaeKwon-Do.

Korean President, Syngman Rhee, named Duk chief instructor of the Republic of South Korea's Army; and it is then when he met General Choi Hong-hi, Major-General of the 29th Infantry Division, with whom he made strong friendship bonds. In 1955, due to his closeness with President Syngman Rhee, and thinking that he could use the military authority of Choi Hong-hi to spread the Chung Do Kwan style, Duk gave an honorary 4th degree Dan in front of the major of the 3rd Army for his contribution to the martial arts.

On December 19, 1955, while searching for a name that would identify the Korean culture, a meeting was held by the Chung Do Kwan School advisors with views to unify the name of the Korean martial art, which was known by different and confusing names such as Tang Soo Do, Gong Soo Do, Taekyon and Kwon Bup; these terminologies were occasionally associated with the Chinese or Japanese culture.

Choi Hong-hi, high-ranking officer of the South Korean army, was ordered to start a military school in 1954. He recruited a group 50 military, some of whom were high ranking students from the Chung Do Kwan School (Hyun Jong-myun, Nam Tae-hi, Han Cha-kyo, Woo Jong-rim, Ko Jae-chun, Kim Suk-kyu, and Kwak Kuen-suk - all professional soldiers). This school became known as the Oh Do Kwan School and sent instructors to Vietnam to train the South Korean troops without permission from Duk.Kang Suh-chong created Kuk Mu Kwan School, and other instructors started to hardly recognize Son as a school official. The influence and leadership of General Choi, started to grow.

At the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was involved in several military, political and social conflicts that forced Lee Won-kuk to emigrate to Japan in 1951. These conflicts made Lee officially retire from teaching, leaving Son as his successor. During the Korean War, Son took over the leadership role at the Chung Do Kwan School, gathered some school members and kept teaching and promoting the Chung Do Kwan style through tournaments, exhibitions and press articles.

He started practicing boxing at the age of 16, and after gruesome training, he rose quickly towards becoming a national champion in his category. Back then, it was very common for him to return home each night, with his face all bruised up and cuts all over it that kept him from eating; therefore his parents decided to forbid him from practicing boxing. It is then, in 1942, that he decided to start his Tang Soo Do Chung Do Kwan style training (School of the Blue Wave), under the supervision of Lee Won-kuk, who was just returning from Japan, as Son would later remember.

Son Duk-sung (Hangul: 손덕성, Hanja: 孫德成) (June 17, 1922 – March 29, 2011) was a martial artist, Grand Master, 9th degree black belt, co-founder of the Korean martial art of Tae Kwon Do, successor of Lee Won-kuk and leader of the Chung Do Kwan school (1950–1959). He was also the chief Instructor of the South Korean Army and the Eighth U.S. Army, founder and president of the World Tae Kwon Do Association and author of the books "Korean Karate, the Art of Tae Kwon Do” and “Black Belt Korean Karate ".

Son Duk-sung, was born in Seoul, in what is now known as South Korea, on June 17, 1922. At that time South Korea was under the Japanese regime.