The Suit Magazine

Since arriving in the USA in 1969, he has trained over 25,000 students and 6,000 police and corrections officers. As anyone with the most cursory knowledge of martial arts is aware, such success is not easy to achieve. The Suit wanted to know what drew Hyun to Hapkido as a young boy, and to learn more about his journey from a young martial arts student to a respected member of the Hapkido elite in the US.

The martial arts form Hapkido is often translated to mean “the way of co-ordinating energy.” It strikes a balance between soft techniques such as Aikido and harder forms like Taekwondo. Hyun studied Judo in his childhood, but it was a boyhood quarrel that piqued his fascination with Hapkido. Arguing with a friend who was studying Karate, an impassioned debate soon sparked a contest over the superiority of their respective martial arts.Hyun lost the contest but gained an important insight, as he told The Suit: “I realized [that] Judo was geared to be a sport with rules, whereas Hapkido was a pure martial art.” Since then, Hyun has believed that aesthetically impressive manoeuvres might serve well in sporting contest, but are useless in proper self defense.

Interestingly, Hyun’s first passion was not martial arts, but operatic singing. As a graduate of the music program at Seoul National University, he initially considered a career in musical performance. Luckily for Chicago’s Hapkido aficionados, Hyun realized that language barriers in the US might get in the way of a singing career. After serving as a sergeant in the Korean Air Force, Hyun left his native Korea to travel to the USA in 1969, eager to make a “meaningful cultural exchange.” After an initial spell teaching Hapkido and self defence at Carroll College in Wisconsin, Hyun moved to Chicago, where he has been ever since. He has opened two mixed martial arts centers in the windy city, and since 1971, these schools have been the backdrop to a diligent and prodigious teaching career.
Much of Hyun’s teaching in the States has focused on giving professionals the means to defend themselves against attackers. He believes that Hapkido’s particular effectiveness can be traced right back to one of its most fundamental principles.

“Hapkido's principle is water: good balance, soft movement for hard attack, and hard movement for a soft attack. For example, if a 2x4 is swung at the head, avoiding is the best technique,” jokes Hyun. Many of the techniques employed in Hapkido derive from The Water Principle, or “Yu”. When rushing water meets an obstacle in its path, it flows around rather than into the obstacle. In the same way, many defense tactics in Hapkido are used to avoid direct confrontation, instead providing ways to use an adversary’s strength against them.

Hyun employs a holistic approach to Hapkido, and defines the martial art as “the harmony of body and mind together”. The demanding training is “part of a better life” in which the emphasis is always on peace and defense rather than violence: “We train to build confidence in both body and mind so we don’t have to fight.” Training in Hapkido is not merely a means to win street fights – it is an end in itself.

 As one of the few ninth-degree black belts in the US, a Grand Master, a teacher and an inspiration to thousands of students over the years, what could be left to achieve for Hyun? His answer reiterates his passionate belief in the holistic approach to Hapkido, and suggests that, really, the journey never ends: “My goal is to build love and togetherness for people to understand each other well.”

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