I have met General Choi a couple of times and I was quite lucky to be selected as a translator during some of the seminars and IICs that took place in Germany. It was always very inspiring and motivating to learn from him directly and being quite close to him during these events.
General Choi once visited Germany in the late 70´s and we met him in Düsseldorf for a seminar. At that time my instructor Max Geburt was the highest ranked German instructor and was preparing for being promoted to 5th degree. During the seminar my instructor told me to ask General Choi whether he would be so kind to correct his pattern. General Choi did not want to correct him in front of the other students, so he told us to come to his hotel room after the seminar. Sometime after the seminar was finished we went to his room and knocked at the door. General Choi had another Korean instructor with him who opened the door and invited us to come into the room, telling us that General Choi was still taking a shower. The hotel room was quite small and there was really not much space between the bed and the wall. After a few minutes General Choi came out of the bathroom, completely dressed in shirt and trousers, his hair still wet and immediately started teaching my instructor Yon-Gae Tul in this small room, movement by movement. An outstanding example showing his passion and that he was never tired of teaching.
During one of the IICs that our President Paul Weiler organized in Cologne in 1995 and 1999, General Choi asked one of the students to come forward and block his knife hand side strike. The student showed that he would block General Choi´s knife hand with his knife hand, but General Choi said to him: “No chance – 50 years of practice!”. His blocking and attacking tools like the forefist, knife hand and outer forearm were nearly black from these 50 years of training, and of course, he instructed us to do the same, to train our hands, arms and feet to become real weapons. To emphasize this, he said: “You have to train your weapons! Your hands look like the hands of a virgin!” At that time Paul Weiler was President of ITF Deutschland – and believe me, he had and still has strong hands, because he has worked a lot with his hands and they were really well trained weapons. In the break after this session he came to me, showed me his firmly closed fist and said: “Does this look like the hand of a virgin?”
Many years ago during a visit of General Choi to Dortmund, Germany, my instructor and I had lunch with General Choi in a hotel. Suddenly a fly started making its´ circles around us and disturbed our conversation. My instructor, who had quite large hands, tried to catch the fly, but failed, tried again, but once more missed his target. But then, suddenly General Choi made a very fast and precise movement and had the fly in his hand. We were both impressed to see, how fast and effective his action was!
Good news for Adapted Taekwon-Do
