Kumdo Test Day

Today I took my first Kumdo test to hopefully move from white belt to yellow belt. I was the last person to get there and everyone was looking at me. I took my place at the front, kneeling along with the other 40 or so students who seemed to range in ages from 5 to 12 years old. The students were more interested in me than in the testing. I had students petting my arm hair, comparing the size of my hands to theirs and asking me questions such as, "What's your name?", "Do you like apples?" and "What is your favourite fruit?" I'm not sure why but fruit seemed to be the topic of the day.

The testing started and I began to relax a little. The kumdo master would shout out commands (in Korean) and 6 students at once would have to obey his command. The children were pretty wobbly with their wooden swords and often missed a command but then they were all white belts so I knew I couldn't feel too confident about my ability.

I was called up along with the third set of students to be tested. I was nervous and made a couple of mistakes but felt ok. When we were finished, the master would ask each student to either introduce himself, sing a song, or recall a memorized poem or chant. When it was my turn, the master told everyone that my Korean was not good so I didn't have to do it...but then there was such a ruckus! All the students wanted to hear me say something or sing a song but the master stood his ground and from what I understand he said, "Next time." When I took my seat again next to the masses of little kids, one of the boys said, "Wow...you good job!" so I felt pretty good. I won't know until next week if I advanced to the next level or not as the three judges have to work out the scores for all the students first.

After the students all tested, then 2 students with black belts were called up and put on helmets and were armed with sponge-covered plastic swords. They fought against each other with full force blows and it was interesting to see how our practicing would work in a real sword fight. I was very interested in this part of the event, however the students sitting around me kept asking me more questions, "Do you like chicken?", "Where are you from?", "My name is Kim Do-Hyun, pleased to meet you."

After the sparring, one of the judges stood up and set up bundles of straw (about 4 feet high)upright around the room. He put a real sword into his belt and bowed. He then proceeded to cut each bundle of straw several times, moving from one bundle to the next. He dispatched 5 straw warriors in about 10 seconds which was pretty impressive. My master then did the same with 8 foot lengths of bamboo, although he did miss one cut, not completely cutting the bamboo. The last strike was through 2 lengths of bamboo at once. My wife explained to me later that the straw is similar to skin and the bamboo to bone. If you can cut through a piece of bamboo, then you should be able to cut through a bone (thus dismembering an opponent) the same size as the bamboo. If this is really true then it is impressive that my kumdo master has cut through 6 bamboo shafts with one stroke (there is a picture at the school of him performing this task). I don't think the opportunity comes up very often to dismember a 6 limbed opponent but I'm sure it's nice to know that you can.