Grand Master Young Gul Son
Grand Master Son was born in December of 1959. He currently holds an eighth degree in Hapkido, seventh degree in Taekwondo, and third degree in Kuhapdo. In 1972, during his childhood, Grand Master Son began martial arts by joining the Taekwondo club (Moo Duk Kwan) at school.
In 1975 Grand Master Son was fascinated by the techniques of Hapkido as he watched the Martial arts movies of Grandmaster Inshik Hwang, who holds the highest degree in Hapkido in addition to being a movie actor. Grand Master Son began Hapkido training in earnest as an apprentice of the Founder of Heuk Choo Kwan, Jongmoon Jin.
20 years later, Grand Master Son met Grandmaster Inshik Hwang by chance at a Hapkido demonstration in Toronto, Canada. After that, Grand Master Son visited Grand Master Inshik Hwang’s Dojang a few times to take lessons in his style of martial arts.
Realizing that there were limitations of Hapkido, that using muscle strength itself instead of power from Dan-jun would not be able to overwhelm every opponent in an actual fight. Grand Master Son has practiced and developed his own inventive martial arts. He has accomplished this by collecting and analyzing a lot of books, videos, and other information related to martial arts that he could find. His family and acquaintances were astonished by his passion.
Specially, Grand Master Son was not satisfied with bare-handed martial arts such as Hapkido and Taekwondo, so he had started learning the techniques of Kuhapdo in 2000 under the famous Grandmaster Tae-ryong Jeong, who provided intensive training in a form of Kuhapdo: Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu ( 無雙直傳 英信流 ).
Afterward, Grand Master Son was able to apply the principle of the sword to bare-handed techniques.Overwhelming opponents using only Hapkido is not easy in modern society where consideration of others is gradually disappearing, and violent crimes are increasing. Therefore, Grand Master Son has created Sugi Hapkido which is a combination of Judo and Boxing based on experience in and understanding of the principles of Taekwondo, Hapkido and Kuhapdo. Master Son has built the foundation of Sugi Hapkido with intensive training of martial arts and by mastering the philosophy and principles of martial arts. In October of 2008, Master Son decided to immigrate to the United States, where there are many adult practitioners, to systematically train and deeply research practical martial arts.
Master Son has also been invited to teach Sugi Hapkido in many countries in South America and Europe and he is always eager to impart his philosophy of martial arts and Sugi Hapkido in many major cities in the United States. Every October, Master Son has held large-scale seminars at the United States headquarters Dojang to emphasize the importance of continuous training and to instruct the methods of training newly invented martial arts. Master Son continues to devote himself to research and to train for the globalization and organization of Sugi Hapkido.