Thank you for your post. I’ve posted a new article to try and explain the Moo Duk Kwan Soo Bahk Do curriculum. The Moo Duk Kwan and the Chung Do Kwan are two of the 5 original schools in Korea after World War II. The Moo Duk Kwan incorporated the Okinawan Karate forms into its system in order to give the Korean people a martial arts curriculum they were more accustomed to. Hwang Kee, the Moo Duk Kwan founder, learned the forms from books and then modified them to align with his system of martial arts. So our relationship to Tang Soo Do is knowledge based, as we perform Pyong Ahn, Bassai, Naihanji, Jin Do etc, just as Shotokan does, though it has been modified slightly. Unlike Chung Do Kwan, we do not have a lineage that can be traced to Funakoshi. So Chung Do Kwan’s knowledge base to Shotokan would be much richer than ours. Today, the Moo Duk Kwan has little emphasis on the “Tang Soo Do” part of the art. The emphasis is on the “Soo Bahk Do” system now.

Now, when I said that Soo Bahk Do is the parent style of Tang Soo Do, I meant that there are now many branches of Tang Soo Do today that came from the Moo Duk Kwan Soo Bahk Do (Tang Soo Do) system that are now independent. I’m sure the same can be said of the Chung Do Kwan. In no way was that comment to suggest that the Moo Duk Kwan is the parent organization of Chung Do Kwan. Chung Do Kwan Tang Soo Do is completely independent of Moo Duk Kwan Tang Soo Do and visa versa.

From what I understand, Chung Do Kwan Tang Soo Do literally translated into Japanese would be Sho-To-Kan-Ka-Ra-Te, or Shotokan Karate, or Shotokan China Hand Way, which would make it the Korean expression of Funakoshi Sensei’s Karate. I’m not sure of Soo Bahk Do, but if Tang Soo Do is of Japanese lineage, then Soo Bahk Do’s relationship to your Tang Soo Do is organisational rather than knowledge based.

Colin