Korean Terminology

Below, I have associated Korean words with the English equivalent. The Korean word is given in both the Romanized version (using English characters) and in Korean characters (Hangeul); this site uses the Revised Romanization system. The Hangeul column is important because Korean has more vowels than English, and the only truly accurate way to get the correct pronunciation is to look at the word in Hangeul.

Of course, this requires learning how to read Korean characters, which is much easier than it might appear. Korean uses individual letters just like English (not pictograms as in Chinese). The letters are simply grouped into blocks by syllable, which might give the general impression of a pictogram at first glance.

J. David Eisenberg has put together an excellent website to help you get started with learning Korean at http://langintro.com/kintro/. Learning Korean is not vital to learning Tae Kwon Do, but in the spirit of the Hwa Rang Do, I encourage you to learn at least some basics about the language and culture of Korea in addition to learning Tae Kwon Do techniques.

Note: in order to view the Hangeul characters, you need to have Korean language support installed on your computer.