The martial arts academy next door to our family business had promotion testing yesterday, and I joined in as one of the judges.

I’m an occasional visiting guest instructor and coach, so I’m usually not intimately involved in what they do. Because of that, normally, the announcements and notices they make are usually very plain. For example, the schedule they release of their testing times is usually done with regular black text on a white background.

I had some spare time a few days ago while I was waiting for a meeting to start, so I decided to throw to­gether a more eye-catching schedule for them.

(Javascript is required to view the embedded Facebook posts.)

Yesterday was test day – it started at 4 PM and went on for almost four hours.

The owners of the academy usually call in a master from another school to maintain judging neutrality. They usually call in someone different each time; the one they called in for this testing session was prob­a­bly the most satisfying judge I’ve seen so far.

Normally, the invited judges don’t really seem to care (while I’m sitting next to them furiously writing de­tailed notes on everyone I’m grading, to help them learn what they need to improve).

In the past, I’ve even worked with a visiting judge who I determined, after my experience observing his actions for a few hours, was a complete and hypocritical joke. He seemed too proud of himself for being a sixth degree black belt, and that apparently made him unable to realize how incompetent he sounded every time he opened his mouth or made a decision.

But, the one for this session seemed to be as detail- and discipline-oriented as I am when it comes to taekwondo.

Taekwondo, being a Korean martial art, is more about discipline than it is about the workout. The biggest selling point for taekwondo is that it will teach younger kids to be obedient to their parents’ authority and be respectful to their peers (among other valuable life lessons).

Generally, academies run by non-Korean people tend to treat the core values of taekwondo as a secondary element, and want it to be more about the workout and fun for the kids.

The guest judge this time, however, even though he was a white American, put a satisfying emphasis on the students’ success, rather than just going through the motions. He valued student presentation (clean­liness, physical evidence of mental preparation for examination) and performance (focus on tech­nique, instead of allowing them to just go through the motions).

In case you can’t find me, I’m the one and only Asian person in the picture. If you can’t see the picture at all, it probably means the embedded Facebook post from Keumgang Martial Arts Academy’s page didn’t load properly.

In the end, three people ended up not passing (which is proof to those who say “everyone passes at Amer­i­can McDojos” that we do in fact actually fail people who do not meet the requirements for promo­tion).