Chang Hon Timeline
"Chang Hon," meaning "Blue Cottage," was the pen-name of Choi Hong Hi, founder of the International Taekwon-Do Federation, and the one responsible for designing and overseeing the creation of this pattern set. As the ITF has since splintered, and there are now many organizations that practice this set of patterns, many find the name "Chang Hon patterns" to be the most accurate in describing them. Some will say "ITF patterns" or "Chon-Ji patterns," but it is all the same set of patterns (Ko Dang and Juche notwithstanding).
"Original" vs. "Late" patterns
Sometimes I will make reference to a pattern's relative time of creation. Based on books published at different times between the late 1950s and the mid 1960s, we can piece together a rough order idea of when certain patterns were created.
For this section, and indeed, this project, I am indebted to both the "History of Taekwon-Do" and "Blue Cottage Taekwon-Do" webpages, where the text resources used everywhere on this website can be found.
A program for first ever Taekwon-Do demonstration team, dated March 1959, lists several Karate kata and three patterns in today's Chang Hon seires: Hwa Rang, Choong Moo, Ul Ji.
In October 1959, the first ever Taekwon-Do book was published. It contained several Karate kata and five other patterns: Hwa Rang, Choong Moo, Ul Ji, U Nam, Sam Il.
U-Nam (or "Woo Nam") ceased to exist after 1959. It was named after Syngman Rhee, then-president of South Korea, who was forced to flee the country the following year after rigging an election and allegedly having political opponents killed. Choi likely felt that having a pattern named after a disgraced ruler was unwise and scrapped it, though he would go on to appeal to a different dictator by naming a pattern after them.
In 2013, an impressive research project (more info here) translated the directions for U-Nam and attempted to recreate this lost pattern. Many parts of it are very familiar, much of the beginning in particular would show up later in Choong Jang.
The provider of the above demonstration program, Grandmaster Chang-Keun Choi, says that Ge Baek was created the following year (1960). Based on its structure and placement, I would tend to believe this.
In 1965, Choi published his first English-language book on Taekwon-Do, entitled "Taekwon-Do: The Art of Self-Defense." It contained the following 20 Chong Hon patterns, along with these Karate kata (right):
Notice the order of the black belt patterns differing from today's.
The 4 patterns not found in this list, and therefore the latest, are Eui Am, Yon Gae, Moon Moo, and So San, said to have been completed the following year.
What is the significance of a pattern's age?
There appears to be a correlation between the age of a pattern and how much it resembles Karate kata. Early patterns like Hwa Rang and Choong Moo draw heavily from the Pinan series in particular, where as later patterns like Eui Am are nearly devoid of common sequences. While this correlation isn't perfect, they seem to follow this general trend. It's difficult to say which of the 14 patterns new to the 1965 list were completed before the others, and if they would further prove/disprove this theory.
