Rayners Lane Taekwon-do Academy

Extracted exponents of the ITF became watered down mostly due to the business aspect(i.e. expensive lawsuits from injury and more promotion fees from expanded belt levels ). They also lacked the basic skills & knowledge of which is the foundation of TKD plus the ability to go forward. ITF teachings that are pigeon holed as pure ITF = non-contact, is a wrong assumption. The wide range of quality of so called ITF style varies from the good to dismal to pathetic. BUT THE QUALITY OF ANY TKD TEACHING DEPENDS UPON THE QUALITY OF INDIVIDUAL INSTRUCTORS.

Master Jhoon Rhee(Washington D. C), Master J. H. Kim(Boston), Master Jung Tae Park(Canada), Master Hee IL Cho(New Mexico), etc. are all first generation ITF instructors but I would have second thoughts about
sparring with their students. On occasions, I do hear of martial art challengers coming up to fight the best students in their dojangs, with regrets to the challengers afterwards. The point good TKD stylist laments about nowadays is the lowered quality instruction. There is nothing wrong with embracing capitalism as long as you deliver quality.

As previously mentioned, there are non-WTF TKD groups ranging from awesome to dismal quality of teaching that adopted ITF styles and forms both good and bad. One can also question that if a school does ITF forms, is it an ITF school? Some TKD schools teach ITF forms(whether it is sanctioned or not by Kukkiwon is not the issue here) and get Kukkiwon/WTF BB certificates.

IRONY
The lineage of some of the best WTF instructors in their late 30 s and 40 s are former students of first generation ITF instructors now in their 50 s and 60 s. So in one way, when the WTF/ITF debate comes on, it is sometimes a debate of young stylists vs. the old stylists. In one case I have seen, a young Korean WTF 6th degree BB instructor snub off a Korean grandmaster 9th degree BB of an ITF style(no longer affiliated with ITF) best represents the one attitude of WTF towards ITF(young vs. old timer). Whereas older grandmasters sees young WTFer s actions insolent . But then, there are also WTF grandmasters who were first generation ITF instructors.

When I see WTF/ITF practitioners pointing fingers condescendingly to each other for the legitimacy of their TKD style, it is sad to see that they do not realize their own three fingers at pointing back at them. The real irony is that when the roots of TKD practitioners are traced up the line of the TKD which ever style it might be, the roots will point back to the few Korean instructors who were trained primarily in Japanese martial arts during the Japanese occupation with some blend of Korean arts. Furthermore, many people forget that ITF/WTF came from the same origin. i.e. more like siblings from one parent.