HAPKIDO'S BONG SOO HAN: THE MAKING OF A MARTIAL ARTS LEGEND

Much has been written about Bong Soo Han (1933-2007), his career as a hapkido master and his connection to the Billy Jack films. 

- MITCHELL GROBESON

"Martial arts is not just a process for training fighters. Fighting is of least importance. What is important is the growth in the student's physical structure, mental discipline and emotional control." -Bong Soo Han

What's not so well-known about his storied life is that his early education and training occurred while Japan occupied his homeland of Korea. As such, lessons in Korean history were replaced with lessons in Japanese history, and many critical documents about the Hwarang, the young male nobility of Korea's Silla dynasty renowned for its fighting prowess, were destroyed.

Although the Japanese used the word "assimilation" to describe their policy during the occupation, it was more like annihilation-of anything Korean. Ethnic Koreans found that the only place they were treated without discrimination was among the Japanese social outcasts who made up the organized-crime clans known as the Vakuza.

When Han attended elementary school, speaking Korean resulted in severe punishment. As a result, he learned excellent Japanese as well as judo, which took the place of physical-education classes. His judo skills were impressive enough that he was selected to attend middle school in Tokyo. There, he was afforded the privilege of joining Japanese students in kendo class.

For the youngster, however, judo and kendo were not sufficient. Later, when he was an adult, he would tell those closest to him, "I believe I was born in the wrong century." His greatest desire, he said, was to become a samurai warrior..

Having grown up on a farm, Han had already mastered two traditional arts of the samurai horsemanship and archery. He figured that his kendo training in Japan would teach him how to use the katana, but he also knew that samurai carried the wakizashi, or short sword. For that reason, he devoted his afterschool hours to the search for a kenjutsu school.