South Korea's Fighting Monks step outside temple walls

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Originally published Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 6:02 AM

South Korea's Fighting Monks step outside temple walls

The order's new leader has taken on the task to preserve and spread Sunmudo, a Buddhist martial art long steeped in secrecy.

By John M. Glionna

Los Angeles Times

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MATT DOUMA / MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Buddhist monk and martial-arts master Ando strides through a bamboo forest in Busan, South Korea.

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BUSAN, South Korea — Buddhist monk Ando remembers the toil of all those years, trying to satisfy the training demands of an aging martial-arts master who could never be pleased.

Silent and impassive, monk Yang-ik perched in the lotus position on a platform above his young protégés, who leapt from mats, kicking two impossibly high bags one after the other, the best adding aerial somersaults before landing gracefully, like big cats.

When they had finished, panting and sweating, the master dismissed them. "You have done nothing today — I have done all the work," he would say. "You try to impress me, but when I am gone you are loose-minded. This discipline is not mere athleticism, but a way of life."

At 47, head shaved, his gray robe swirling around his precise movements, Ando recently succeeded the old master to direct the training regimen of a unique Buddhist order South Koreans call the Fighting Monks for their history in battling Japanese invasions. In the process, Ando is bringing its centuries-old traditions into the modern world.

Stern and reclusive, the old master Yang-ik rarely allowed outsiders to train among the monks and resisted popularizing a martial-arts technique known as Sunmudo that has historically been steeped in secrecy.

Yang-ik taught his students about sacrifice and selflessness, but Ando reasoned that did not preclude the order's fighting history and techniques from being introduced to the outside world.

Since he took over, he has expanded a Sunmudo gym in Busan, where 35 laymen now train with eight monks. Ando has also visited Los Angeles, where he wants to open a martial-arts training center.

"I practice this art for the honor of my master and for the country people who lost their lives fighting alongside the monks centuries ago," he said. "I want to spread it around the world."

For more than a quarter-century, Ando has studied at the ancient Beomeosa Temple, which was first built 1,400 years ago in a bamboo grove high in the mountains that now overlook the sprawling southeastern port city of Busan.

On a clear day, Ando can make out Japan's Tsushima Island 30 miles to the west, a proximity that has influenced the city's history and bestowed a special role to Buddhist holy men usually known for their profound passivity.

In the 1500s, monks here used swords, knives, spears and throwing stars to help repel a Japanese invasion that ended with the burning of their temple by retreating troops. Centuries later, a rebuilt Beomeosa became headquarters for the monks' underground resistance to Japanese occupation in the 1930s and '40s.

But their martial artistry languished until the 1970s, when Yong-ik arrived to revive Sunmudo by systemizing its techniques, this time without weapons.

There is little sparring, but defensive moves once used in combat are combined in a sort of athletic meditation, like that of China's Shaolin monks. For years, students conditioned themselves by striking tree trunks, as well as a millstone the size of a car tire that hung from a tree, until it swayed to their rhythm.

Always watching, Yang-ik had a stern philosophy that had nothing to do with fighting style: that vanity and ambition prevented martial-arts enlightenment.

Ando arrived at the place known as the Temple of the Nirvana Fish in 1984, drawn by the reputation of its master. Just 20, he came for the martial arts, but later took his oath as a monk.

Master Yong-ik became the focus of his world. Often imperious, sometimes grandfatherly, the elder monk demanded that his students not only pray and practice martial arts, but also work.

They rose at 4 a.m., running to the top of the nearby mountain before breakfast. Between the twice-daily practices, they carved stone to produce religious icons and likenesses of the Buddha.

But while the master reveled in the past, his top student began to concentrate on the future. For years, Ando went to the graying Yang-ik and asked to be allowed to expand Sunmudo outside the temple walls. Each time he was rebuffed.

In 2010, on the third anniversary of Yang-ik's death, temple elders named Ando to succeed him. Ando soon brought his own style to the task, changing Beomeosa from a closed society to one that encourages outsiders to study there.

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