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By Master Guy Edward Larke
Since the late ‘80s there has been an unending
fl ood of neo-martial arts that
are the ultimate mix of the best
traditional arts can off er. It got
worse after the advent of MMA.
Now every second dojang is
one of these fusion academies.
Th e concept of new arts is
good, healthy even. Th e idea
of considering grappling, out
of fairness, had to be visited.
In reality, every art started in
part from adapting the old
to the realities of that society
and time period. Th e problem
lies when every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to
create a style simply because they fi gure they are
a tough guy or don’t want to pay membership
fees to any existing organization. Th at is
increasing exponentially here in South Korea.
Th is leads me to another grandmaster I had
the honor of making the acquaintance of. My
martial arts brother Master Kim Je-Wook and I
were introduced to Grandmaster Nam Gi-Suk
by Master Kim Sung-Soo (who I wrote about a
short time ago). Th e gentleman in question not
only turned out to be a very capable grandmaster
in any situation, but also broke every stereotype
of an MMA coach/ master you can think of.
Every martial artist has a unique beginning, and
GM Nam is no diff erent. His story takes us some
decades ago to the then-still-developing city of
Incheon in a still-impoverished South Korea.
Th e then-young boy was wandering through
some woods near a fi shing area. He noticed a
friend of his and naturally went to say hello. His
friend was a gentleman who turned out to be the
disciple of the grandmaster of Kuk-Je Hapkido.
After talking with the man at some length, Nam
became very interested and started meeting with
him two to three times a week in that area fortraining. As bizarre and admittedly creepy as this
might be by today’s standards,
at that time there were no real
dojangs to speak of in Incheon.
Grandmaster Nam’s Hapkido
experiences left him with an
insatiable thirst to learn diff erent
skills to test his strength and
stamina. So throughout his
time in school and after that
he kept discovering more and
more things. In junior high
school he did Tae Kwon Do
and wrestling to test himself,
and in high school he tried his
hand at boxing. Later on, he travelled to the
Philippines to study Arnis and Kali. Years passed
and he travelled to Tokyo, where he exchanged
techniques with a group of martial artists there.
In 1998 Nam took his experiences and
revelations in real-life combat, physical/
spiritual/ psychological conditioning and combat
sports, and founded his own discipline—
Shil-Juhn Kyuk-Sul-Do. If you look at
the Chinese characters for the discipline,
shil () stands for “fruit,” juhn (㒿) for
“fi ght,” kyuk (㝙) for “strike,” sul (嫢) for
“technique” and do (拢) for “the way.”
Th e purpose of the art was to develop something
truly for every individual, whether it be a
disciplined martial artist, a cocky young
athlete/ fi ghter, a young child or a middle-
aged salaryman. Th e art was designed to be
multifaceted with many layers to each aspect.
One of the primary goals of the style is to
strengthen the body and give the individual
the skills needed to face any level or type of
altercation. In addition, the actual combat skills
needed to be attained as quickly as possible due
to the insanity of the 21st century. Not many62 January 2018 / taekwondotimes.com