Jhoon Rhee, who helped popularize taekwondo in the U.S., dies at 86
Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee, a Korean-born martial artist who settled in Washington, D.C., and helped popularize taekwondo in the United States, preaching a philosophy of “truth, beauty and love” while teaching members of Congress how to kick and punch, died April 30 at an assisted-living community in Arlington, Va. He was 86.
The cause was complications of shingles, said his son Chun Rhee. When Rhee was diagnosed with the disease, about six years ago, it brought an abrupt end to a training regimen that included 10 sets of 100 push-ups each day.
At 60, he had performed one of those sets in less than a minute during a House committee hearing on aging. For his 80th birthday, he performed a set in 50 seconds before a crowd of onlookers in the Cannon House Office Building.
Few martial artists were as accomplished as Rhee, a onetime aircraft mechanic in the South Korean military who exchanged fighting tips with fellow martial artist Bruce Lee and boxer Muhammad Ali, and taught taekwondo to columnist Jack Anderson, actor Chuck Norris and Washington Redskins coach George Allen.
Rhee “introduced Korean martial arts to the United States,” said Keith Yates, president of the American Karate and Tae Kwon Do Organization. “There are people all across the United States who can trace their martial arts heritage back to him.”
A 10th-degree black belt who could break a board with his foot while balancing a glass of Coke on his head, Rhee was responsible for two crucial innovations in taekwondo. He created modern safety equipment for martial artists — foam padding for the head, hands and feet — and devised the martial arts ballet, in which “forms” (movements) are performed to music such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the theme from the 1960 movie “Exodus.”
Rhee was not the first person to establish a professional taekwondo studio in the United States, but he was the first to offer instruction, Yates said. He began teaching classes in 1956, when he arrived in Texas as part of a military training program, and in 1962 established a gym in downtown Washington, D.C.
At his professional peak, in the mid-1980s, Rhee operated a network of 11 martial arts studios across the Washington region, catering to more than 10,000 children and adults. He initially advertised his classes by writing letters to foreign ambassadors in the city, promising that he could improve their children’s discipline through the study of taekwondo.
By the 1970s, he had begun broadcasting a television commercial that made him a household name locally.
“When you take Jhoon Rhee self-defense,” the ad’s earworm jingle began, “then you too can say: Nobody bothers me! Nobody bothers me!” The commercial concluded with a wink from Rhee’s 5-year-old son, Chun Rhee, who declared, “Nobody bothers me, either!” (The song was written by Nils Lofgren, who studied at one of Rhee’s gyms and later became the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and was covered by groups including OK Go.)