KOREAN NET

- Establishing the Korea Taekwondo Demonstration Team in China to promote the magnificence of Taekwondo all across China
- The first foreigner to achieve a doctorate degree in 104-year-long history of Tsinghua University’s physical education course
- The whole family is dedicated to Taekwondo, with the total Taekwondo grade reaching 20 including Master Seo Won-shik; his son and daughter is participating in the demonstration team
- Working toward the vision of creating a Taekwondo gym that earns the trust of the Chinese people and cause positive influence to their lives

Seo Won-shik, eight-degree Taekwondo master, is making an effort to foster his Taekwondo pupils to make his gym the most trusted Taekwondo institute in China.

Due to the THAAD incident and China’s strict ‘zero-Corona’ prevention measures, the cultural exchange between Korea and China has been in long-term stagnation. In such circumstances, Master Seo is struggling to not let go of the cultural tie between Korea and China by creating a Taekwondo demonstration team consisting mainly of Koreans inside China. We met with him, the taekwondo master with 40 years of training experience, trying his best to realize his dream of running the biggest Taekwondo chain in China despite the hard times in which he must live through.

Q. What do you mainly do in China?
- I am running a premium Taekwondo gym in China. In 2011, I opened up a Taekwondo gym in Wangjing. Ever since then, I’ve been working to spread Korean culture deep inside China by teaching Taekwondo to upper-class Chinese. In particular, I’ve started to spread the magnificence of Taekwondo all across China by founding the Korea Taekwondo Demonstration Team in China.

Q. What exactly is a ‘premium Taekwondo gym?’
- Our gym has a system of teaching Taekwondo consistently for one, five, or ten years instead of letting students quit after only learning for a month or two. It is run under a one-on-one lesson between the instructor and student, instead of running group courses. The system was developed for each instructor to take responsibility for each student and allow them to make in-depth explorations into the spirit and techniques of Taekwondo.

Wonshik Taekwondo Gym, established by Master Seo, has a system of running one-on-one lessons between instructors and students.

Q. What was the reason you opened up a premium Taekwondo gym in China?
- When I first came to China, I personally thought the country would become the center of the Taekwondo market in the near future. That was because the economic growth of China was evident after the success of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, with the population of 1.4 billion as its potential. As I expected, the popularity of Taekwondo was high in China, and it soon became the country with the largest number of people enjoying Taekwondo. China also became the country with the most rich people in the world. I wanted to offer an opportunity to people living in the country with the largest number of Taekwondo lovers and create enthusiastic fans of Taekwondo. That was the reason I opened up a premium gym in China.

Q. We heard you’ve been running a demonstration team as well as your gym.
- Taekwondo is being loved by people all around the world as a cultural sport that represents Korea. Especially, its performance left many impressed thanks to its elegant yet powerful movement. That is why a lot of people had the desire to see the shows of taekwondo performance. In particular, the Taekwondo performance of WT (World Taekwondo Federation) in 2021 caused a global sensation when the show aired on ‘America’s Got Talent.’ Taekwondo demonstration teams are mostly based in Korea, which is why they face a lot of difficulties in performing overseas. The reality is that Korea isn’t keeping up with global demand. The situation isn’t that different in China as well. After the COVID-19 prevention measures are lifted, I suspect the need for Taekwondo shows to rise drastically. In consideration of the geographical limits and the local demand of China, I founded the Taekwondo performance team, the Korea Taekwondo Demonstration Team in China, in September 2021 and became in charge of its management.

Master Seo Won-shik officially founded the Taekwondo performance team, the Korea Taekwondo Demonstration Team in China, in September 2021 and became in charge of its management.

Q. Is your demonstration team getting a lot of requests for performances?
- I was surprised to find out that we’ve been receiving more requests than we expected even in the times of COVID-19. Since last year, we participated in various events between Korea and China whenever we had the chance, including the National Day reception of the Korean Embassy in China, Korean companies’ event of entering the Chinese market, and the Korea-China Global Association’s event for wishing the success of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Recently, we collaborated with the Korean Cultural Center in China to create content on Taekwondo, which allowed us to promote the sport and act as a diplomatic mission of Korean martial arts.

In 2021, the Taekwondo Demonstration Team’s activities continued even in the times of COVID-19. The photograph was taken after the team’s demo performance at the 2021 reception event of the Korean Embassy in China.

Q. You must have had a lot of difficulties while establishing and running a Taekwondo gym here.
- In 2011, I opened up my premium Taekwondo gym targeted to upper-class Chinese people in Wangjing, Beijing. As I had a lot of experience in founding and running Taekwondo gyms back in Korea, I thought I would have no problem in operating one in China as well. However, that thought turned out to be a huge mistake. Creating a legal body in China to open up a gym, recruiting instructors, and trying to gather members were all processes that I had to start from scratch. Especially, I brought up a lot of envy and rivalry from those in the same industry at the start of my career here, and that caused a lot of internal pain for me. Loneliness became a problem as well because I was living alone in a foreign land.

Q. What was the reason that kept you running the Taekwondo gym in China even when things were hard?
- The most obvious answer would be that I love Taekwondo too much. Ever since I was little, I was disciplined by the spirit of Taekwondo, such as manners, honor, patience, abstinence, and fortitude. Those values helped me overcome the difficulties I faced while running the gym. Also, the strong sense of trust I’ve built up with my Chinese pupils of the gym and their parents, the premium system that can only be found in Wonshik Gym, and the passion of the instructors and the management team all contributed to conquering the hardships.

Q. We heard you received a doctorate degree in Tsinghua University.
- While preparing for the Taekwondo gym in China, I had the desire to make friends out of loneliness, but I also thought that I needed to have good communication if I wanted to run a gym in another country. Another thing I had in mind was that I needed social ties with Chinese locals, so I attended the university here in China. I had no intention at all, but it led me to become the first foreigner in the 104-year-old history of Tsinghua University’s doctorate course of physical training to receive a doctor’s degree in 2016.

When Master Seo became the first foreigner to pass his doctorate thesis in Tsinghua University’s physical education course, figures from both China and Korea came to congratulate him.

Q. Did the things you learned in university contribute to your gym management?
- During my course in Tsinghua University, I created two Taekwondo classes for master’s and doctor’s courses to teach the sport to over 100 Chinese students. I also ran special Taekwondo lectures for about 200 people in North China Electric Power University. Moreover, I became the first foreigner to become an adjunct professor in Beijing University from 2016 to 2019 to teach Taekwondo as a general study to over 1,000 students after I had graduated Tsinghua University with my doctorate degree. The professors and colleagues I met in my years at Tsinghua University, and the pupils I had in my Taekwondo classes have all been a great help to the operations of my gym and the demonstration team.

Q. How about your family? Did they help a lot too?
- I wouldn’t have made it here if it weren’t for the help from my family. I was fortunate enough to have all three children become Taekwondo personnel (Master Seo at eighth grade, eldest daughter at fourth grade, younger daughter at fourth grade, youngest son at fourth level, total 20 grades) and aid my work along with my wife. They were the biggest motivation in my life as well as running the gym. My youngest son tells me that he wishes to become a person of Taekwondo just like me, and his words provide me with strength even in the hardest of times and motivates me to do better.

Master Seo and his three children are making a pose in front of the main stadium of the Beijing Olympics.

Q. What are your future plans and vision?
My vision is to make my gym a Korean Taekwondo training center that Chinese people trust the most, and under that vision, I’m striving to carry out a few plans. The first is creating a franchise. I’ve been planning this one since 2019, and I wish to create over 100 premium gyms across China in the long run. Currently, the project is on standby due to COVID-19, but after the situation is settled, I am planning to initiate a business plan to establish 10 Taekwondo gyms in 10 major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. My second plan is to expand the Korea Taekwondo Demonstration Team in China. I’ve run consultations on support with Chinese universities to realize this plan, and I’m planning to have discussions with relevant Korean agencies to consult the matters on running the demonstration team. The third plan is to run a Chinese Taekwondo expert forum. By doing so, I’ll be able to configure a system for Korean Taekwondo businesses to enter the Chinese market as well as enhance the coaching skills of local Taekwondo instructors in China. Lastly, I plan to construct a system that allows online education and the distribution of Korean Taekwondo products. With this project, Taekwondo education will be operated flexibly even in times similar to COVID-19.

A group photo with Beijing University students after a Taekwondo class

Master Seo states that human relationship is the most important factor in China. He also stresses that trust is the basis of building up key relationships. His idea is that Taekwondo gyms are human relationships as well because the most important thing in running a gym is the trust between the master and pupil. We wish Master Seo will realize his dream of ‘creating the most trusted and influential Taekwondo gym in China with the integrity he has built up through his 40 years of Taekwondo experience and the reliability he made for himself in his life in China.