Top 10 Korean Martial Arts to Know

Tang Soo Do is a traditional Korean striking art that heavily influenced both Taekwondo and Karate, emphasizing hard linear techniques, forms practice, and ki energy development through meditation. Chuck Norris, its most famous practitioner, holds an eighth-degree black belt and credits the style with shaping his film career. Though its competition viability is slower than Taekwondo's Olympic speed, its philosophical depth makes it a pivotal influence.

Taekkyeon is a Korean folk martial art built on fluid, rhythmic footwork, low sweeps and off-balancing rather than hard strikes. Documented in Joseon-era sources, it long predates taekwondo, was almost extinguished under Japanese colonial rule, and survived largely through one practitioner, Song Duk-ki, who was designated a holder of the tradition in 1983. UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011.

Haidong Gumdo is a modern Korean sword art, organised in the 1980s, built around solo cutting forms performed against multiple imagined opponents and test-cutting on rolled straw, rather than the protected sparring that defines kendo. Its promoters trace the art to Goguryeo-era warriors; most historians regard that lineage as unsupported.

Subak is a Korean unarmed fighting art recorded in Goryeo and early Joseon court histories, where it appears both as a military skill and as a competitive spectacle staged before the king. No technical manual for it survives, so what is taught as Subak today is reconstruction rather than transmission — which is why its relationship to Taekkyeon and modern Taekwondo is argued over rather than settled.

Yudo is the Korean name for judo, introduced from Japan in the early twentieth century and governed today by the Korea Judo Association under international IJF rules. South Korea has been one of the sport's strongest nations for decades, with Korean judoka taking Olympic medals at every Summer Games they have contested since 1984.

Kuk Sool Won was organised by In Hyuk Suh in 1958 as a single curriculum pulling together strands of Korean martial practice: strikes and kicks, joint locks and throws, traditional weapons, and the breathing and healing work grouped under ki. The breadth is the point — students train empty-hand and weapon forms alongside each other rather than specialising in one.

Won Hwa Do prioritizes philosophy and inclusivity over combat depth, basing all movement on the circle as a fundamental principle. Systematized in Korea in 1972, it integrates defensive techniques, breathing exercises, and Korean Taoist mental cultivation, accepting practitioners of all ages and physical conditions - a flexibility rare among Korean martial arts. Kuksool Won offers a more extensive curriculum by comparison.