Martial Arts WI: Korean Text Found in 1949

To someone with a very suspicious mind, more time on his hands to watch You Tube than is healthy, a superficially broad martial arts experience, and a desire to stir up hornet's nests of artifical contraversey, watching a typical Korean martial arts demonstration, with few exceptions, conveys a remarkably simmilar impression to watching a typical Japanese martial arts exhibition, over and above the usual arguements invloving the limits to the variety of ways the human body can move in hand-to-hand and melee combat. As a matter of fact, as noted in the Sword-Buyers-Guide.com message forum, and other places such as Martial Arts Planet, several websites give conflictig claims for the reason, with the most extreme being that not only do Korean Martial Arts completely owe their existance to Japanese models, but the very concept of a an actual seperate Korean culture does not predate the end of WWII.

I am not that someone with that suspicious mind, let alone anyone who buys that particular arguement about Korean Martial Arts in the slightest. To be sure, the Japanese began their rule of Korea at the begining of the Twentieth Century by burning as many native history books and martial arts texts as they could get their hands on, and several noted Korean martial artists of the mid-Twentieth Century tried to reconstuct their arts by turning first to Japanese arts as a framework upon which to build. This can be seen for example in the way Tae Kwon Do bears a rather closer resemblence to the harder styles of Karate than it does to preserved art of Taekkyon, which doring the Choson Dynasty had been by royal fiat reduced from a martial art learned by royal body guards to a folk dance with no martial merit (except for flexibility) whatsoever, as if one of the French kings of the House of Bourbon had demanded that Savate be reformuated as ballet.* Not only that, but even in the indisputedly Korean martial arts text known as the Muye Dobo Tongji, the meelee weapons most frequently seen (For the forms Dan Do, Jedok Gum, Wae Gum, Bon Kuk Gum, Ssang Gum, and Ssang Soo Do) are what many even with relatively good education would conclude are Japanese Katana/Tachi and (for Ssang Soo Do) Nodachi. This is entirely understandable, but not entirely accurate. The original weapons from the Choson Dynasty period vary from Japanese swords in subtle but important ways. First of all, Korean swords of that period (though not Korean swords made nowadays) usually feature the hilt and guard permenantly fixed to the blade, which is anathema to how the Japanese understood swordmaking even in the Gempei and Onnin Wars and Sengokujidai. Second of all, Korean Paedo and Samgakdo feature very odd blade geometry by Japanese standards. Still, those aren't details that show up very well in forms demonstrations on You Tube.

Part of the problem is that Korean swords and even polearms were previously that much more distinctive before the Choson Dynasty, and especially before the Mongol conquest. The Hwanwuldaegum, for instance, was a straight, single (for cavalry) or double edged (for infantry) weapon featuring the ring pommel that gives it its name and a blade and handle long enough for two hands, but a light weight and balance that can accomodate one hand perfectly, similar in concept, if not execution, to European longswords. A polearm called the Gumjiang featured at least five feet of wooden poleshaft and up to three feet of double-edged steel, similar to a Swedish staff-sword, a French partisan, or an Itallian Speido. and these were only two examples.

How would it have changed the Korean, and thereby the world martial arts scene if in 1949, a readable martial arts text from Korea's United Silla or Koryo Dynasties were to be discovered in an abandoned Buddhist temple by monks fleeing south from the Communists, and every attempt to discredit it through materials, radioisotope, or metatextual analysis only served to embarass the doubters?

* This is not an isolated incident by the Choson Dynasty. Even today, many modern Koreans say that the only good things to come out of the Choson Dynasty were Gochujang, Hangul, and the Muye Dobo Tongji, and those things happened in fits of inadvertance.
 
The year is 1949, and a group of Buddhist and Daoist monks are fleeing the Communists. They find themselves at an abandoned Buddhist temple by a lake about 20 Km north of Donsongeup, just north of what would one day be the De-Militarized Zone, that was so run down, it's difficult to determine exactly which denomination built it. The sanctuary was still standing at the time, though there were more than a few holes in the celing.

One of the monks, who as part of his vows has long since forgotten his birth name (or so he would say in fifteen years to the interviewing press) and went by the relgious name of Mileung Heongnim, is wandering the grounds, looking for the temple library. While he doesn't find the library itself, he comes across a vault in an underground passage he accidently uncoveres from observing a part of a wall that suspiciously lacks mortar compared to the rest of it. (Allegedly, the key to opening said vault involved placing tiles signifying the Three Treasures and the Eightfold Path in their proper places in a Mandala, but there may never be an independent confirmation of this matter; as this site would become one of the hardest faught battlefields of the Korean War.)

It turned out that the vault contained several articles. Most were scrolls and books of known Sutras and/or commentaries on them. Others were devotional poems presumably written by the monks. However, off in one corner, there were five articles. Four of them were books each with a different color, roughly equal in size, with pages bound in tarnished bronze hoops, that oddly lacked Buddhist symbols or titles on their painted sourwood covers. The other article was a monk's staff, four feet long, topped with an eight-spoked wheel. Or that's what it looked like at first. When he picked it up, he noticed that there was twisty play about a foot down the length, and when he twisted it enough, it turned out to be a sword in the disguise of a staff.

The blade was straight, double edged, with a very odd point that looked like a chisel tip, while the edges were offset so as to give a trapezoidal cross section. Despite having not been polished in who knew how long, the blade posessed a very blackend patina, and what turned out to be silver and bronze bands covering the grip were thuroughly tarnished, but there wasn't any active red rust.

Mileung Heongnim picked up the book with the blue colored cover, and opened it. Several characters were faded, but it appeared to call itself Volume 3: Strength from the Sea and appeared to be a treatise on naval warfare, as well as shipboard combat. Among the weapons depicted were tridents, sword bladed polearms, short axes either with shield or in pairs, and bolas.

He then opened the Yellow colored book. It was titled Volume 1: Strength from Heaven. It was written by one "Little Brother Lion," probably a religious name, and dedicated to King Hyeonjong of the Koryo Dynasty.

This perticular volume appeared to be a work about how to build and train an army "to defend the realm in ways more than just the physical." The poem that filled up ten pages before the table of contents began:

Young Warrior, Learn to Love
The Gods, and your Parents
That you may have Honor.
Act Always with Honor to Learn
those arts that Enlighten You
Fight Well, With or Without Sword,
Saber, or Knife, Axe, Spear, or Halbred.
Stalk like the Tiger, Fly like the Dragon,
Fight Like the Lion, Leap like the Gilin!
Yet Remember, you do not fight
only for yourself...

Questions? Comments? Flames?
 
To Sior: But unlike Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir's mumbo-jumbo, my arts really exist OTL, they just aren't actually Korean, except for the archery. I'm afraid I'm just not quite ready to invent a usable martial from whole cloth.

The big problem is that I can't come up with a Korean name for the art as whole. The books do not actually provide names for the weapons methods shown, only to the weapons themselves, and individual techniques, and then not all of them. As in "this is how to use a Ring-Pommel Long Sword (Hwawulddaegeom)," or "this is how to use a Full Moon Axe (Man-wol dokki)." I plan for Mileung Heongnim, or his greatest student Gong Ho-Lang to call the grappling, tripping, and throwing portion Yu-Bup, but I have no candidates for the name of the art as a whole.

Aside from being already in use OTL to describe a different art founded by Lee Joo Bang, Hwarangdo in context does not work as the name of this art for other reasons. First of all, it was originally a Silla Dynasty institution. The Koryo Dynasty regarded the United Silla period as a usurpation, as none of the three royal lines of Silla, as opposed to Baekjae and Koguryo, decended from Gojeoson or Dangun Wangeom, as opposed to the claim of King Taejo. Since there were frequent callbacks to Koguryo during the Koryo Dynasty, could Dae Mu Sul ("Iron War Art,") or Dae Sa Do ("Way of Iron Mastry") work?
 
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The Year is 1954. Mileung Heongnim has settled in a city called Wonju, in the northeast of the newly formed Republic of Korea, roughly 140 Km east of Seoul. He would later state that he originally wanted to go further south, to Ulsan or Busan, but a Boddhisatva (whom he refused to name) had bade him to found a temple in a mountainous area just north of National Highway 55 called Gahyeon-Dong, and a training hall in town in an area called Ilsan-dong, to which he would walk on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. He hadn't studied any martial art at the temple where he had spent his novice years, but on that night a little over five years ago, he had found himself the custodian of a martial art, that he was determined to make live again. But there were a few problems...

Milieung Heongnim had been studying the four volumes almost nonstop, well, when he wasn't performing the proper daily rites, or cooking, or sleeping. Okay, in the grand scheme of things, that isn't quite as much time as one might think. Like many Buddhist denominiations, his believed that while books are important, the best lessons are taught "from warm hand to warm hand." Unfortunately, in this case, he had no warm hand to teach him.

Worse still, many of the weapons depicted in the books had no surviving equivalents even in China or Japan. Indeed, the sword that he had found at the ruined temple had a shape to its blade like he had never seen before, and its like, or at least with simpler fittings, was the basis for much of the armed portion of the volumes. Then there were things like axes with blades like giant sharp steel lolipop heads, straight double-edged sword blades on 1 3/4 meter pole shafts, and knives similar to Chinese Eight Slash Knives (Sometimes called Butterfly Swords), except that they lack D-shape guards (or any guard at all) and feature double edged blades that look vaguely like like the shape of flounder or halibut.

Probably his biggest handicap was his age. Mileung Heongnim was not really a young man. He was now fifty-four years of age, and while the combination of a reasonably nutritious diet, frequent fasts, and trips up to the belltower had left him reasonably fit and trim, they hadn't prepared for the amount of flexibility or power he would need to properly perform the techniques.

Then, one day, a young boy wandered into the dojang looking for directions. Then, as he watched the monk move through a form he devised from reading the unarmed section in Volume 2 called saebak. The boy started to move in imitation of Mileung Heongnim, a pretty good imitation as a matter of fact.

"What is your name, child," the monk asked him.

"Gong Ho Lang*, Seonsangnim."

"Respectful as well as dilligent, a good combination." Inwardly, he was shocked at the possible coincidence. It would later turn out that the boy's family used the same Chinese character to write their surname as the Koryo Dynasty's ruling house. "Tell me, do you have any brothers?"

"No, Seonsangnim, but I have two sisters. Oh, and my father Gong Geum Sa# is looking to for a place to exercise since the factory reduced his hours..."

Hmm, thought Mileung Heongnim, maybe that Boddhisatva's instructions are proving fruitful after all...

*The given name means Tiger

#The given name means Forbidden Lion
 
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I was under the impression that the argument about Korean martial arts goes something like:
"We were FIRST! We did it long before anybody else and China has had no
influence on Korean culture in any way whatsoever!" ;)

How would it have changed the Korean, and thereby the world martial arts scene if in 1949, a readable martial arts text from Korea's United Silla or Koryo Dynasties were to be discovered in an abandoned Buddhist temple by monks fleeing south from the Communists, and every attempt to discredit it through materials, radioisotope, or metatextual analysis only served to embarass the doubters?.
Not the slightest.
These aren't the kind of views that are affected by solid evidence
contradicting them.
 
I'm expecting a small explosion of Boys' Own and other publications featuring short stories with some heroic Tommies/other heroes taking on fiendish Korean agents using martial arts skills.
 
I was under the impression that the argument about Korean martial arts goes something like:
"We were FIRST! We did it long before anybody else and China has had no
influence on Korean culture in any way whatsoever!" ;)


Not the slightest.
These aren't the kind of views that are affected by solid evidence
contradicting them.

I wasn't asking for Korea's opinion of its own martial arts as a whole exactly, although the differences in technique and approach of even the unarmed arts from the collection eventually called the Four Volume Classic of Strength* compared to, say, Taekwondo or Hapkido, should become quite glaring by the mid 60s at the latest. And much of the weaponry, if not nescisarrily the motions to use them, are based on surviving sculpture and drawings of melee weapons from the Han Dynasty, Chinese Dark Ages, the Korean Three Kingdoms era, the kingdom of Taehon/Ballhae, and even the United Silla Dynasty. (Though the Full Moon Axe and variants were strictly temple weapons after the Sui Dynasty in China, like Tiger Hook Swords, Deer Horn Cutters, or the Tri-Sectional-Staff.)

The only unique weapon (and AFAIK, the one I completely made up) in the books is the sword blade with a chisel tip and offset edges, which, while lacking a specific name there, will be referred to as a "Seoll Dalang Geum" (Hanja "斬鮪劍," Hangul "썬 다랑어 검"), literally "Tuna Choppping Sword" due to the fact that it's shape and cross section resemble two identical, but very narrow Japanese Tuna Cutters laid back-to back and fused. (The Hanja version of the name is also a pop culture reference, if you can get it.) The purpose of this sword is to provide a solution to the problem of Geum (straight double-edged swords) snapping their points off when thrusting through Shan-scale (Chinese-style armor until the Qing Dynasty), Chainmail, or the joints in scale lamms.

The monk calling himself Saja Dongsaengyang or "Little Brother Lion," claims that when he was first recruited into the army, it was invented by his captain on behalf of King Gwangjong, as a way to combine the armor piercing ability of a saber (Do, from Chinese Dao) with the versatility of a Sword (Geum). This also has an analogy to the alleged development of curavuture (Sori) that differentiated Japanese Tachi from Tang Dynasty court swords. It is quite clear from a critical reading of the text that it places itself at least implicitly in a common Sino-Korean-Japanese martial heritage.

But I digress. When Lee Joo Bang, In Hyuh Suk, and Choi Hung Hi try to create an organization called "Kuk Sul Do," how will it effect their fortunes when it becomes obvious that not only does it not use any material from the Muye Dobo Tongji, but there turns out to be a survivng text even older, and the weapons it purports to teach have a rather less apperant Japanese flavor. Will it still be a case of too many Chiefs and not enough Indians? Or will they unite to save their own faces and cast aspersions on "Big Brother Matraeya" and the volumes he supposedly rescued, as Mileung Heongnim's Buddhist religious name literally means? And what does this do the the legend of Suhan Dosa?

I'm pretty certain about where I plan to go with this, at least in the broad brush strokes, but I do want to hear the opinions of the rest of the forum.
 
I don't think the authors or audience of Boys' Own adventure stories will know or particularly care.

Then there's the fact that by the time it leaves Korea, Boy's Own and its ilk will have been reduced to Boy's Life and that's it. Frankly, the boys' publications most affected by this stuff will probably be Shonen Jump, Comic Champ, Newtype, and possibly Marvel Magazine and 2000 A.D.

On the other hand, one wonders at the impact on such publications as Black Belt, Martial Arts Masters, Blade, Patterson's Bowhunting, Dojang, Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Primative Archer, and Action!
 
Since I for obvious reasons can't say much about the changes to the
Korean martial arts scene or the subsequent international butterflies...

Then there's the fact that by the time it leaves Korea, Boy's Own and its ilk will have been reduced to Boy's Life and that's it. Frankly, the boys' publications most affected by this stuff will probably be Shonen Jump, Comic Champ, Newtype, and possibly Marvel Magazine and 2000 A.D.

On the other hand, one wonders at the impact on such publications as Black Belt, Martial Arts Masters, Blade, Patterson's Bowhunting, Dojang, Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Primative Archer, and Action!
Why would there be any major impact at all?

I mean, from what we've been told it is not some Ultimate Style,
superior to all others, or some unorthodox style that does things
no other styles have thought of or remembered that you can do.
It's a style using traditional but largely forgotten weapons and
for obvious reasons unchanged since the early 11th century.
As a style it won't exactly change the face of martial arts or
the perception thereof.

I can see it getting a lot of attention in Korean popular entertainment, but
I can't see how or why it is supposed to take the rest of the world by
storm. Other styles that were rediscovered, formalised, created or came
to prominence at the same time or in times and circumstances more
amenable to pop culture success didn't.
 
Since I for obvious reasons can't say much about the changes to the
Korean martial arts scene or the subsequent international butterflies...


Why would there be any major impact at all?

I mean, from what we've been told it is not some Ultimate Style,
superior to all others, or some unorthodox style that does things
no other styles have thought of or remembered that you can do.
It's a style using traditional but largely forgotten weapons and
for obvious reasons unchanged since the early 11th century.
As a style it won't exactly change the face of martial arts or
the perception thereof.

I can see it getting a lot of attention in Korean popular entertainment, but
I can't see how or why it is supposed to take the rest of the world by
storm. Other styles that were rediscovered, formalised, created or came
to prominence at the same time or in times and circumstances more
amenable to pop culture success didn't.

Oh, it isn't some sort of ultimate fighting style like Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir's idiocy mentioned above, or this thread would be in Alien Space Bats. Still, this is more of a combination of small subtle things and a matter of Six Degrees of Separation type of thing. For instance, How might the existance of this art and this group affect the studies and personal lives Barry Harmon and Bruce Sims, who married in to the families of higher ups in Kuk Sool Won? How would Korean characters be treated in martial arts video games? Could there be some subtle influences in Western fantasy literature and/or visual media? What happens when members of this group start bumping into the groups that practice the OTL art I am using as a basis for this? (Okay, that will perhaps have to wait until I reveal more about the art in subsequent posts, but I believe I've already given up a massive spoiler.)
 
I appreciate how you're tackling a scenario like this, so I'll try to respond with the limited information that I know.

I am not that someone with that suspicious mind, let alone anyone who buys that particular arguement about Korean Martial Arts in the slightest. To be sure, the Japanese began their rule of Korea at the begining of the Twentieth Century by burning as many native history books and martial arts texts as they could get their hands on, and several noted Korean martial artists of the mid-Twentieth Century tried to reconstuct their arts by turning first to Japanese arts as a framework upon which to build. This can be seen for example in the way Tae Kwon Do bears a rather closer resemblence to the harder styles of Karate than it does to preserved art of Taekkyon, which doring the Choson Dynasty had been by royal fiat reduced from a martial art learned by royal body guards to a folk dance with no martial merit (except for flexibility) whatsoever, as if one of the French kings of the House of Bourbon had demanded that Savate be reformuated as ballet.* Not only that, but even in the indisputedly Korean martial arts text known as the Muye Dobo Tongji, the meelee weapons most frequently seen (For the forms Dan Do, Jedok Gum, Wae Gum, Bon Kuk Gum, Ssang Gum, and Ssang Soo Do) are what many even with relatively good education would conclude are Japanese Katana/Tachi and (for Ssang Soo Do) Nodachi. This is entirely understandable, but not entirely accurate. The original weapons from the Choson Dynasty period vary from Japanese swords in subtle but important ways. First of all, Korean swords of that period (though not Korean swords made nowadays) usually feature the hilt and guard permenantly fixed to the blade, which is anathema to how the Japanese understood swordmaking even in the Gempei and Onnin Wars and Sengokujidai. Second of all, Korean Paedo and Samgakdo feature very odd blade geometry by Japanese standards. Still, those aren't details that show up very well in forms demonstrations on You Tube.

As someone who has practiced Kumdo for about eight years or so, I will say that some of the styles/methods in that particular field are assumed to have been taken from around Silla or Goryeo times. If I remember correctly, the Bon Kuk Geom Beop supposedely has its origins in a sword dance that a Silla warrior performed with the ultimate motive of killing the noble/ruler who was watching it, and another one, which I unfortunately cannot remember the name of, is a group of about seven sets of preassigned attacks and blocks that are performed with an opponent, presumably from around the same time period. Because I had to memorize these so that I could become a black belt, instead of doing any in-depth research, they might be just different versions of Japanese forms. However, the fact that they are distinguished at least in name suggests that Kumdo has at least attempted to introduce native forms.

As for the different sword types, I do know for a fact that Joseon swords had a safety latch that is lacking in both Chinese and Japanese ones around that time. There might have been significant differences in sword length and shape as well, but I'll have to reread the source to be certain.

The big problem is that I can't come up with a Korean name for the art as whole. The books do not actually provide names for the weapons methods shown, only to the weapons themselves, and individual techniques, and then not all of them. As in "this is how to use a Ring-Pommel Long Sword (Hwawulddaegeom)," or "this is how to use a Full Moon Axe (Man-wol dokki)." I plan for Mileung Heongnim, or his greatest student Gong Ho-Lang to call the grappling, tripping, and throwing portion Yu-Bup, but I have no candidates for the name of the art as a whole.

Aside from being already in use OTL to describe a different art founded by Lee Joo Bang, Hwarangdo in context does not work as the name of this art for other reasons. First of all, it was originally a Silla Dynasty institution. The Koryo Dynasty regarded the United Silla period as a usurpation, as none of the three royal lines of Silla, as opposed to Baekjae and Koguryo, decended from Gojeoson or Dangun Wangeom, as opposed to the claim of King Taejo. Since there were frequent callbacks to Koguryo during the Koryo Dynasty, could Dae Mu Sul ("Iron War Art,") or Dae Sa Do ("Way of Iron Mastry") work?

Well, it depends on how you want to distinguish the different forms of Korean martial arts. I do know that Subak, which later became Taekkyeon, was frequently used for military training during the Three Kingdoms period and during Goryeo. As far as I know, it did not involve weapons, but I'm guessing you could expand that to include them as well. However, you would have to make a distinction at some point between weapon and non-weapon forms, and then go from there.

Also, although Wang Geon was probably of Goguryeo descent, Goryeo probably did not consider Silla as a usurpation, as it inherited most of Silla's former territory, while the same was mostly not true of what had been Goguryeo territory. Meanwhile, the Samguk Sagi, which was written by an official who had close ties to Silla, seems to suggest that Goryeo was the direct successor of Silla, which is more evident when you begin to locate the placenames, most of which are on the peninsula, and ignore those in what is now Manchuria. In short, the text was an attempt to show how Silla and Goryeo supposedly "unified" Korea as a whole, although they never managed to recover what had been once Goguryeo or Balhae territory.

The Year is 1954. Mileung Heongnim has settled in a city called Wonju, in the northeast of the newly formed Republic of Korea, roughly 140 Km east of Seoul. He would later state that he originally wanted to go further south, to Ulsan or Busan, but a Boddhisatva (whom he refused to name) had bade him to found a temple in a mountainous area just north of National Highway 55 called Gahyeon-Dong, and a training hall in town in an area called Ilsan-dong, to which he would walk on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. He hadn't studied any martial art at the temple where he had spent his novice years, but on that night a little over five years ago, he had found himself the custodian of a martial art, that he was determined to make live again. But there were a few problems...

Technically, Hyeongnim is used by a male to address a male superior that is a few years older or so. However, in this context, attaching this title makes him sound like he is a gang boss, so I think it would be better to just call him Seunim, which is the Korean word for monk.

"Gong Ho Lang, Seonsangnim."

Technically, Ho Rang I would be a more appropriate name, as Horang doesn't really mean anything, but it's acceptable.

I wasn't asking for Korea's opinion of its own martial arts as a whole exactly, although the differences in technique and approach of even the unarmed arts from the collection eventually called the Four Volume Classic of Strength* compared to, say, Taekwondo or Hapkido, should become quite glaring by the mid 60s at the latest. And much of the weaponry, if not nescisarrily the motions to use them, are based on surviving sculpture and drawings of melee weapons from the Han Dynasty, Chinese Dark Ages, the Korean Three Kingdoms era, the kingdom of Taehon/Ballhae, and even the United Silla Dynasty. (Though the Full Moon Axe and variants were strictly temple weapons after the Sui Dynasty in China, like Tiger Hook Swords, Deer Horn Cutters, or the Tri-Sectional-Staff.)

I'm not sure where you got Taehon from, but Balhae's official name was Jin from 698 to 712.

The only unique weapon (and AFAIK, the one I completely made up) in the books is the sword blade with a chisel tip and offset edges, which, while lacking a specific name there, will be referred to as a "Seoll Dalang Geum" (Hanja "斬鮪劍," Hangul "썬 다랑어 검"), literally "Tuna Choppping Sword" due to the fact that it's shape and cross section resemble two identical, but very narrow Japanese Tuna Cutters laid back-to back and fused. (The Hanja version of the name is also a pop culture reference, if you can get it.) The purpose of this sword is to provide a solution to the problem of Geum (straight double-edged swords) snapping their points off when thrusting through Shan-scale (Chinese-style armor until the Qing Dynasty), Chainmail, or the joints in scale lamms.

I think you're starting to mix Korean with Japanese here, because "斬鮪劍" should be pronounced as Cham Yoo Geum (참유검). I think your suggestion only works if each character is pronounced by its meaning, which never occurs in Korean.

How would it have changed the Korean, and thereby the world martial arts scene if in 1949, a readable martial arts text from Korea's United Silla or Koryo Dynasties were to be discovered in an abandoned Buddhist temple by monks fleeing south from the Communists, and every attempt to discredit it through materials, radioisotope, or metatextual analysis only served to embarass the doubters?

But I digress. When Lee Joo Bang, In Hyuh Suk, and Choi Hung Hi try to create an organization called "Kuk Sul Do," how will it effect their fortunes when it becomes obvious that not only does it not use any material from the Muye Dobo Tongji, but there turns out to be a survivng text even older, and the weapons it purports to teach have a rather less apperant Japanese flavor. Will it still be a case of too many Chiefs and not enough Indians? Or will they unite to save their own faces and cast aspersions on "Big Brother Matraeya" and the volumes he supposedly rescued, as Mileung Heongnim's Buddhist religious name literally means? And what does this do the the legend of Suhan Dosa?

I'm pretty certain about where I plan to go with this, at least in the broad brush strokes, but I do want to hear the opinions of the rest of the forum.

Well, to sum up, there were probably various texts describing a variety of different forms, so unless a collection was discovered, it would probably not change martial arts in Korea as a whole. In addition, with the POD that you have suggested, it will probably not impact martial arts in general unless you can increase foreign interest in Korean culture drastically to the point where the country's influence would probably be unrecognizable from OTL.
 
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Still, this is more of a combination of small subtle things... ...How would Korean characters be treated in martial arts video games? Could there be some subtle influences in Western fantasy literature and/or visual media?
Yes. Small subtle things.
It's just that it sounded like "...and then popular entertainment all over
the world becomes filled with characters using this style, because awesome."
but that might be Awilla's fault and my misreading.

It really depends on whether it becomes more prominent than Tae Kwon
Do or Hapkido and is equally or more distinct. If it does, a lot of
characters in martial arts video games will have a line in the description
saying [style] instead of Tae Kwon Do or Hapkido, but I doubt they would
be treated all that differently.
If not, it would affect Korean characters and influence Western media
about as much as Krav Maga, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, Bando, Krabi Karbong
and what-have-you for their respective national stereotypes and image.
(Consider the Gracies and how the generic Brazilian martial arts game
character is still a capoeirista.)

Of course, it could have subtle, or blatant, influence on Western fantasy
literature or visual media, but the question is why and how?
Are we talking about ubiquitous ninja, "...is an awesome fighet because
he trained [style] under Gong Ho Lang", "Seoll Dalang Geum is the ultimatest
awesomest sword!"* or what?
What are you comparing its possible success and influence with?
*cf. katana, Desert Eagle
 
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