US President Barack Obama will get an honorary taekwondo belt when he visits Korea tomorrow:
U.S. President Barack Obama will be given an honorary taekwondo belt to mark his first visit to Korea on Wednesday and Thursday. A government official said that President Lee Myung-bak will present Obama with an honorary taekwondo degree certificate and a uniform embroidered with his name.
Obama practiced taekwondo for about four years with an American master in Chicago from 2001 while he was serving in the Illinois state senate. He obtained a green belt.
Officials are reportedly having a tough time deciding whether to serve the Korean rice beer makgeolli or a Californian wine for the welcoming luncheon. I guess Bud Light is off the table.
PS: Seriously, what’s the over-under on the POTUS apologizing for something while he’s here?
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Four yrs of training and just a green belt?? Either his master was way too demanding, or he was too lazy. In Korea, you get a black belt in less than 2 years.
Hopefully he’ll apologize for liberation, as in “we should have let your liberation forces succeed first before dropping those A-bombs that I’m really ambivalent about.”
Not sure about any apologies, but who’s taking bets on how much shit will hit the fan if and when he doesn’t bow to president Lee in the same way that he did to Japanese Emperor Akihito or Saudi King Abdullah.
The difference being (to me at least) that the Emperor and King are royalty and President Lee is just an elected public servant like Obama himself.
An honorary hanbok for Michelle?
What’s that? An Obama date night in Seoul? Would surely put the place on the map.
First a free Nobel Peace prize and now this. When is it gonna end!?!?
#1: And in America, you can get an undergrad degree in one year. It ain’t the norm. 4 years of training and a green belt sounds like he actually had a legit teacher.
dry, exactly. in korea, the kids get “level up” every couple of months to keep them interested, and their mothers paying. it’s no different than the english hogwan system, really. i watched 10 year olds that couldn’t do five push-ups during their testing get a high five and a black belt.
Taekwondo? Does anyone even do this sport anymore? It seems so 1980s.
DLB
It’s true. My little nine year-old daughter — kind of a stringbean, that one — is good for about two push-ups, but she’s got some kind of licensed-killer certificate for a red-and-black belt, which apparently is supposed to be a big deal. But I wouldn’t expect her to be able to fight her way out of a paper bag.
If Obama only achieved a green belt after four years, it would seem that he’s not very hard-working. Kind of playing at it, I’d say. More show than action. But that doesn’t sound like Obama, does it?
I just want to mention one more time here that I, JW, at one time in his prolific taekwondo career, trained under the guidance of one Herbert Perez, Gold Medal winner at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. That is all.
http://www.goldmedalcenter.com/instructors.html
What? Have you ever taken TKD classes? Hardly any, at least in the US, use boards. We do, on the other hand, have sparring sessions where bones sometimes get broken, noses get bloody, and worst of all, precious nutsacks get hammered by a misdirected frontkick up the crotch.
Maybe it’s true what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree
. My daughter is 9 and has been taking TKD classes twice a week for about 1.5 years and she’s way passed Barry “I know karate, and voodoo too” Obama belt wise and, I suspect, in terms of actual skills. Haven’t seen any need to start her on serious calisthenics training, because, even though she’s nearly a year younger than her school cadre, she’s bigger and stronger than even all the boys and her punches and kicks already pack a wallop.
I, on the other hand, bucked the trend and learned kendo… At one point I could put out up to three candles with my bamboo stick.
“Tae Kwon Do is terrific for keeping in shape, but it’s also a deadly, serious, killing system. I mean, it’s probably the best of all martial arts. Jiu jitsu sucks – what you want is Tae Kwon Do.”
mkaplan, not sure if that was sarcasm, but the world knows TKD is the least effective of the martial arts. it is a sport where u train to punch short of the targets, to kick and pull back, rather than through…
there are some wonderful youtube vids of muaythai fighters laying the beats to TKD fighters. very amusing i assure you.
oh, and have u not watched UFC? not too many TKD fighters there. BJJ (brazilian jiu jitsu) although not my favorite, is prominent in the training of some of the best fighters out there.
#16: Actually, there are a fair number that have trained in it, most prominent being Anderson Silva. He mentioned that the footwork and knowledge of kicks was something he found very useful to this day. Also, BJJ practioners make quick work of MT fighters on the ground, but this kind of argument in recognizing usability is obviously flawed.
That’s not to say TKD is what you should if you want to brawl, but it does have other strengths.
#14: That’s not quite bucking the trend…in the kendo clubs here the majority of the students were koreans, and a few chinese and caucasians. Usually yelling out some ninja phrases or something too while they attack. Oddly, very youths take TKD these days, especially among gyopos; most of the classes I’ve seen around me are filled with white kids, nearly 50/50 genderwise as well.
I meant I bucked the trend in Korea — I grew up in Korea you know. But I’m not surprised at all that many Korean Americans are kendo students.
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