East Meets West – Teaching Taekwondo across two continents.

As part of our 40th anniversary celebrations we’re sharing the stories of our members. In this feature we hear the story of how a British Taekwondo club operated on two continents in the early 2000’s.

Phoenix Taekwondo was created in 1996 with twin brothers Russell Pearson and Chris Pearson teaching classes in the London area. The club is now located in Didcot, Oxfordshire, and has over 150 students in its membership. However, Phoenix Taekwondo has a unique story to tell in having the experience of running Phoenix Taekwondo schools across two continents over a 7-year from 2000-2007 in London, UK and Tokyo, Japan.

As is the case with many British Taekwondo clubs, Phoenix is enthusiastically operated in addition to the instructors’ day jobs, always carefully balancing commitment between the two. Chris’ day job is an astrophysicist working for the UK, European, Canadian, and Japanese space agencies and as such his job took him to Japan in 1999 until 2007.

Phoenix Taekwondo East Meets West – Teaching Taekwondo across two continents 2

Whilst working in Japan, he received requests from many co-workers to teach self-defence classes. This evolved and eventually, together with his wife Eunmi – a Korean national but with a doctorate degree in Japanese – they took the decision to open the official Tokyo branch of Phoenix Taekwondo to the general Japanese public.

PhoenixJapan scaled

This led to Phoenix Taekwondo teaching on two continents: with one instructor in Tokyo, Japan while Russell continued to successfully steer the London, UK branch of the club. This was an amazing and unique experience. A British national, teaching a Korean martial art to the Japanese! All classes were taught in Japanese, which involved some interesting translation from Korean. The club performed regular gradings, including a Dan Grading together with external national Japanese Taekwondo examiners, plus regular demonstrations to the Japanese public.

‘World Taekwondo’ associated clubs were very rare at that time in Japan and the Phoenix Dojang was run using the UK Phoenix model for classes that endeavours to cater for all ages, genders and social backgrounds. This ultimately proved to be a successful class plan in attracting both children and adults.

Importantly, the adults were drawn from a wide range of people, from the classic Japanese ‘Salaryman’, to mothers and fathers, plus a few foreign residents. It was not until our Dojang began to interact with the smattering of other WT clubs in the area that it was realized that our UK class model was the exception to the rule for the case of Japanese Taekwondo. The Japanese class model for Taekwondo was completely 100% sport orientated. Poomsae were found to be a very low priority, hoshinsool (self-defence) virtually non-existent with the typical Japanese Dojang (or Dojo) dominated by child and youth competitors. Indeed, at one class Chris trained with in central Tokyo the instructor somewhat glibly informed him that 30 years old was far too late to begin Taekwondo. Through its own classes however, Phoenix forged a new perception of Taekwondo in Tokyo.

Ultimately this 7-year adventure was a fantastic experience, forging new lasting friendships and breaking down cultural barriers between continents through the power of Taekwondo.

Visit the Phoenix Taekwondo website to find out more about the club and how you can begin your own Taekwondo journey. 

Photos: Submitted.

If you would like to share your Taekwondo story please contact Richard Gottfried, Marketing, Digital & Media Manager via marketing@britishtaekwondo.org or 07706 342156.