Kendo and Kumdo

by Paula
(Duluth, Georgia, USA)

I have a 2nd dan blackbelt in Taekwondo and have been helping teach classes. I also teach Chen Taiqi and Taiqi sword.

Our school started a Saturday Kumdo class in January. I was really interested in this and studied your introductory videos on youtube. There seemed to be only minor differences.

Our Sabonim is also a business man, and has been away for the last few weekends. So....I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being expected to teach with another assistant instructor, or have no class at all.

Can I use the information I learn about Kendo in the videos in a Kumdo class just substituting the Korean terminology that we learned? My intention is to keep things very basic!

Answer: Thank you for your question and watching my videos!

If your school is teaching Japanese kendo then there should not be any conflict. Unfortunately some Korean people believe that the Japanese kendo is originated in Korea, which is not true. So they do kumdo differently from kendo. In that case, your school probably doesn't want you to learn kendo.

This is a very unfortunate issue between Korea and Japan that we will encounter often.

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