Taekwondo Korean Hangul Calligraphy Wall Scroll

Taekwondo

When written in Korean Hanja, it's written the same in Japanese Kanji, Chinese, and Korean Hanja characters. However, this wall scroll features the characters written in modern Korean Hangul (the characters used as the standard form for about the last 100 years).

This is one of the most widespread types of martial arts in the world as well as being an Olympic sport. Taekwondo was born in Korea with influences of Chinese and Japanese styles, combined with traditional Korean combat skills. Some will define it as the "Korean art of empty-handed self-defense".

In the simplest translation, the first character means "kick", the second character can mean either "fist" or "punching" the third means "way" or "method". Altogether, you could say this is "Kick Punch Method". When heard or read in various Asian languages, all will automatically think of this famous Korean martial art.

Note: In Japanese, this is pronounced/Romanized as tekondo.
In Mandarin Chinese, it's tái quán dào.
In Korean, it's pronounced 태권도.
This Korean title is most commonly Romanized as Taekwondo, but sometimes it's written Tae-Kwondo, Tae Kwon Do, Taekwon-do, Taegwondo, Tai Kwon Do, Taikwondo, Taekwando, Tae Kwan Do.
Chinese alternates include Taiquandao, Tai Quan Dao, Taichuando, or Tai Chuan Tao.

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See our Taekwondo custom Korean wall scrolls page for more custom Korean calligraphy options.

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About the calligrapher:

I met Cao Bin years ago, and long before his fame. At that time, his wife was running a small house cleaning business. One day she was tidying up my mother-in-law's home in Beijing and overheard that I am in the business of selling Chinese calligraphy and artwork. She asked if I'd like to meet her husband who was a pretty good calligrapher as she described him with modesty.

The next evening, I visited his modest studio and saw some really nice calligraphy and great black ink bamboo paintings that he'd just finished. After a lot of tea drinking and chatting, I asked if I could commission a few pieces.

Through the years, I would occasionally buy a few more pieces, not realizing how famous he had become. I might pop by his studio, only to hear from his wife that he was down in Anhui receiving an award for his calligraphy (calligraphy competitions are comparable to the fervor that sports championships have in the rest of the world). It finally dawned on me that this man I had known for about 7 years was a premier calligrapher for whom books had been published featuring his work, and the recipient of numerous awards.

The best part is that I have guanxi (a word that kind of means "special relationship" in Chinese), he gives me better prices than anyone else. This really fits well with my philosophy to offer high quality Asian artwork that everyone can afford.

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More about the artwork:

This is painted on xuan paper (often incorrectly called "rice paper"). The raw artwork was then taken to my workshop in east Beijing where the master mounter built it into a handmade wall scroll.