Jürgen Hagenbusch My Martial Arts career started out 1970 with Judo when I was 11 years old. I had practiced Judo for
approximately 2 ½ years and reached the rank of Green Belt. That time Judo and Karate were the only Martial Arts Styles available in my Hometown.
Then in October 1972 a new type of Movie reached Germany - the Chinese Kung Fu Movies from Hongkong / good old Classical Kung Fu Theater. These Movies gave the word “Martial Arts” a brand new meaning. All these fancy - great looking - spectacular Techniques - what a great surprise it was. All these great Techniques I thought - but not one of them within Judo. Being influenced by these movies I thought that there had to be more about it and so I switched over to Karate. I signed up with our local sports club offering traditional Shotokan Karate. Since there was no Beginners Class when I signed up, I was offered to practise with the Advanced students - which was a great opportunity for me. Then about 2 months later, when the Beginners Class started, I had gained so much knowledge that the Beginners Program was quite easy for me to handle, compared to the newies. Anyway, I worked myself up to the first final Test - the Yellow Belt. By that time I had already realized that there was a lot of hard work behind all this and that it is not as easy as I saw in these Movies. But still I was amazed of the Variety this Style offered compared to what I had practiced before. After I had graduated from Beginners Class, I was offered to sign up with the lower level Advance Class - which I did. Through the years I worked myself up to Blue Belt. By that time I realized that a very special section of the Martial Arts became interesting for me - the Forms / Kata. I started to bother older Students with higher Rank to show me more Forms since I just couldn’t get enough. Later on I found out why I was so addicted to Forms. The simple reason was because I was able to input all my knowledge and moves, my own character just to express myself in my own personal way and the real meaning of the Arts into my Forms and make it visible to others with the result of presenting the true Martial Arts without words - my individual way. My Instructor noticed all that and asked me if I wanted to compete in the upcoming Tournament in June 1974. This Tournament was a Bavarian State Shotokan Tournament - my 1st Tournament. I was nervous - but reached 3rd place within Blue Belt Level.
This was the beginning of a long Tournament career.
I always attempted to compete in Kumite as well, but it wasn’t satisfying me at all. Anyway - once I got great mental help - when big great Joe Corley (Battle of Alanta) came to our Dojo holding a Seminar about Semi - Contact Fighting. This made me feel quite better and changed my mind a little bit on this issue. From then on I tried both - Forms & Kumite. But later on in my career I had to quit Kumite do to a health problem and just concentrated on Forms, Weapon Forms and Breaking.
In November 1975 - just before I was to be registered for my Brown Belt Testing, something very Important happened, which changed my whole career within the Martial Arts. Being at the Dojo practicing with all the other students for our upcoming Belt Test, the main Entrance Door opened and this Oriental looking man walked in. All the students stopped and one of the Black Belts walked up to him to see what he wanted. It started out into a very nice conversation and by that time all the students surrounded him as well (in the 70's it was very seldom for a Oriental Master to just appear inside a German Karate school - one just like from the movies). He introduced himself as Kahm (Kum) Sung Woo. A Korean Master looking for a school to work for as an Instructor in part time. He told us that he was a soldier assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division in Würzburg. We were all excited and before he had left, he gave us a little Demo on his skills. What I didn’t know that night was that this Master will change my whole life in the upcoming near future. My wish was that he would come back and be our Instructor. My dream became true - it happened. He signed a contract for being our main Shotokan Instructor and everybody was happy - even the Black Belts. A few months later I found out that Master Kahm had developed his own style 1969 called “SungWooDoKwan”. I got very interested and asked him if he would accept me as his student within his own Art. After a few days he agreed and gave me private lessons. Meanwhile a few more students heard about this and got interested as well. Suddenly everybody wanted to learn SungWooDoKwan and to become a student of this Art. It must have been the very special way of his Art which made it to become the Majority within the Dojo. By that time already 2/3 of the students wanted to learn SungWooDoKwan. It became such a great issue, that we decided to open our own SungWooDoKwan School. We found a adequate place and after some hard renovating we was able to present the 1st SungWooDoKwan school in Germany in June of 1976.
We had gained more and more students week by week but still didn’t reach everybody throughout the area. Therefore we decided to do a big Budo Show, presenting the new Art to the public. That night we counted over 2000 interested visitors. We had great success - and I was very proud being part of this. Due to the fact that the audience loved our Demo, we put on 3 more Big Budo Nights within the following year. Meanwhile Master Kahm traveled to London to sign a contract with Warner Studios for the Pink Panther Movie Part 2 - in which he was performing the Stunt Choreography and Active Stunts replacing Kato - Inspector Clouseau’s Butler which gave him his Nickname Kato Sung. Being back in Germany he had arranged a meeting with AFN Frankfurt (Military TV Station - U.S. Forces Germany) to have a 3 part Martial Arts Self Defense Series established - I was part of this. We stayed 2 days at the Studios in Frankfurt to accomplish this Series which was put on Air 2 weeks later in the Show called Guesthouse. After this was taken care of Master Kahm signed up to be the Head Instructor in Self Defence for the 3rd Infantry Division Military Police Company - I had the great opportunity to be the Assistant Instructor on this matter.
Being a National U.S. and International U.S. Forms Champion, he was a great Instructor to accomplish my Forms career. Here are my main results since the beginning as a member of the SungWooDoKwan school in 1975:
Tournaments 1975 - 2005:
46 1st places - Forms 44 1st places - Weapon Forms 31 2nd places - Forms 36 2nd places - Weapon Forms
23 3rd places - Forms 32 3rd places - Weapon Forms 12 1st places - Breaking 4 2nd places - Breaking 4 2nd places - Kumite |
5 3rd places - Kumite 5 Grand Champions 1 European - Champion - Forms
1 European - Champion - Weapon Forms 3 U.S. Champion 1 U.S. Champion, Texas Open, 1979 (Dallas) 5 German Champion U.S. - Forms 2 Vice German Champion - Forms
1 3rd place – European Champion - Dacascos European Open |
Other results:
* Performing 3 Asian - Pacific Month Celebrations for the U.S. Forces Europe * Assistant Instructor Military Police Class * Masters Assistant - AFN TV Self Defense Series
* Participated in several Big Budo Shows / Grand Openings of TKD Schools * Participated in the TV Show A Night of the Sports which was dedicated to Handicapped Kids
* 1993 Induction into the World Martial Arts Hall of Fame by Dr. Moore, USA * 1993, October, Appointed by Grandmaster Dr. Kahm for President KUM SUNG Martial Arts German Branch * 1996 - Master Level - 5th Dan
* Head Instructor of several KUM SUNG Schools - Germany including 11 Black Belts (3 inactive) * 2000, December 25th, Grandmaster Level * 2001, July 8th
, Induction into the Martial Arts Masters, Pioneers and Legends Hall of Fame by Prof. Ed Brown, Connecticut USA.
Current Ranks:
* Grandmaster Level 6th Dan - KUM SUNG Martial Arts Organization * Grandmaster Level 6th Dan - SungWooDoKwan
* 5th Dan - Sung Moo Kwan - Korean Weaponry * Instructor / Level - White Crane / Tiger Kung Fu - Chinese Weapons
My main Instructors trhroughout my 35 years of Martial Arts:
* Grandmaster Dr. Kahm Sung Woo, 8th
Degree (my most important and current Instructor) * Sensei Peter Langer, Master Degree – Shotokan Karate * Grandmaster Richard Lee (Kobudo, Shotokan) * Simu Wu Meiling (Wushu) * Sifu Wu Runjin (Wushu) * Grandmaster Chee Soo (Wu Shu) * Master Jean Frenette (Kobudo) * Master Yonsang Kim (Hapkido) * Shaolin Monks
Martial Arts is what I am and what I believe - Martial Arts is my way of live. Martial Arts gave me strength to recover from
pain when my deeply loved Mother died in 1992. I owe Grandmaster Dr. Kahm - he taught me what I know. I thank my wife Petra for all the support and love which made me what I am. Jürgen Hagenbusch