Dear Hapkidoin,
The EUROPEAN HAPKIDO UNION was founded in 2009, as a hapkido nonprofit organization, with headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia.
How did we come to the conclusion that we need a unitary European Hapkido community?
South Korea as the home of the original hapkido is far, and hapkido itself is divided into lots of different federations and associations both in Korea and worldwide. The old masters are great and good, but unfortunately, there are fewer old masters and original ones among the living, so we in Europe are forced to turn to one another and cooperate to improve the quality of our hapkido, and also our clubs and national federations and associations.
So we came up with the idea of creating a single European Hapkido Union which would gather as many trainees and clubs and national federations regardless to the Korean, international federation, or Kwan which originally belong to. We all have a teacher and basic Kwan or Federation, recognized or not, we all train skill called Hapkido with a single root, a creator and originator, the same or very similar techniques and with the same desire to spread this knowledge skills in our cities, countries or our continent of Europe. Why not do it TOGETHER?
We all started from the basic premise that Hapkido is a universal skill, full and complex. Skills we offer as our product to our trainees, telling them that Hapkido is the best in what we ourselves believe by extensive training and transferring knowledge to a new generations of trainees. But the common assumption is that art itself is slowly dying out as a skill and if there are no athletic upgrades are fewer trainees in our Do jang and Kwan.
Following the tradition because, as well as modernization of hapkido both in Korea and the world we have created a system of athletic competition that would be adaptable to all styles of hapkido which can be found in the European Do jang. Also the results which we achieve together in competitions in our championships and tournaments for common rules for all current and future members can be a good marketing and promotion to attract more new members into our clubs, which indirectly increases our income from membership fees, but also gives us a new view the skills and opportunities through the development of Hapkido through our clubs, which means the increase in financial earnings of coaches.
Your trainers have a new way of proving the quality of their work, and self-awareness about the value of their work hapkido and developing new opportunities and view in hapkido. How the skill is a bit pointless compared to other modes of self-defense (gun ownership, and increased EU laws), sport gives us a replacement for the realism of the situation of self-defense, but also fulfills their spiritual work in hapkido. Confidence that sports rules offer us still keep the exercisers in gyms because of the attractiveness of all forms of competition within the European hapkido Union.
How do trainees want yet to prove themselves and compare their knowledge to others, we offer through our EUROPEAN HAPKIDO UNION the possibility of joint cooperation, competition, and to work together in seminars, workshops and hapkido workshops, hapkido summer and winter vacations and other forms of joint work and common hapkido life in our Europe.
If the our masters and grandmasters estranged from one another, and often deny the existence of the other, sometimes taking primacy in hapkido, let us, their European students be one step forward and return the old spirit of the unity of skill in the modern European tradition to the Korean martial skills and unite through the common work in the EUROPEAN HAPKIDO UNION.
Welcome to the EHU membership!
Sincerely yours,
Mladen Kužnik, 8th Dan
EHU CHAIRMAN
