Helping you discover the ki to life - Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim teaches how to harness the life force energy of ki - Cover Story

American Fitness, March-April, 1994 by Peg Jordan

Upon finishing this tale, she shows a photograph of herself seated in the first row of a huge group shot--the tae kwon do masters. Several dozen inscrutable-lookingAsian men, and one ear-to-ear grinning woman.

Once that barrier was broken, Kim looked for new challenges. She proceeded to train the first female team for the Pre-World Games held in Seoul, and coached her fledgling team into setting a new record, capturing all three medals in the competition.

Her Work

To describe Grandmaster Kim as solely a martial arts leader would paint an incomplete portrait. Just to look at her, you get a sense of overwhelming paradox. Here is a woman who looks like the reigning beauty queen of Korea, with a movie star's face and cascading curls, floating like a butterfly in a full-length, pink organza traditional dress. If you didn't know she occupied a status a quantum leap beyond the highest achievable martial arts degree, the eighth-degree black belt, you'd bet her sweet smile and demure manner could win her a Geisha of the Year award, not Instructor of the Year in the Tae Kwon Do Hall of Fame, which she just received this winter--an award given out only twice before in the history of the sport.

Not only does she run the impressive, 50,000-square-foot facility which houses the Jung SuWon training facility, she is also president of a rapidly-growing computer company. (A few years ago she had a dream about computers, and instructed one of her loyal black belts, Scott Salton, a young computer engineer, to launch a company for them. Today, Lighthouse Computers has 40 employees, sales in the millions and is gaining an edge over its competitors.)

When she enters the dojang, or training room in her studio where 100 people are assembled on a Monday evening, everyone stops to bow, then suddenly breaks into applause. Instructors scramble--one for a microphone for Grandmaster, another to pound out a rhythm on a massive drum. As she accepts the microphone, she breaks into a song, looking like a karaoke singer in a lounge. Then everyone in the room joins in. They're all singing a favorite song--"We Are Part of the Universal Heart." They are genuinely in love with this woman, eager to show their loyalty, respect and achievement by belting out this song at the top of their lungs. Joyful faces, enraptured voices, Grandmaster moving around like a whirl of pink cotton candy--this is not your typical martial arts punch-and-kick studio.

I'm so dumbfounded by the spectacle before me, I begin to wonder exactly what she teaches. Every student in her presence is at once elated, disarmed, yet invincible. The room virtually crackles with a powerful, unified presence. It's a collective spirit but with a profound diversity--there are overweight women, children of every age, old men with cataract glasses, skin-and-bones young guys, a man in a wheelchair, a runaway teen, housewives and bankers. Hearing stories of how Kim's students capture gold, silver and bronze medals in overseas competitions, I expected to find a crack corps of elite, homogenous-looking "Bruce Lees," and instead I found a ragtag army of every shape and size. Here is a snapshot of the human race at its happiest, empowered physically, psychoemotionally and spiritually, recognizing in song each other's inner strength, uniqueness and interconnectedness. I asked her, "What are these people on?"