Jiu Jitsu in Korea – first impressions

I’ve been in Korea for over a month now and I believe it’s the right time to share my thoughts about local BJJ.

So far I had an opportunity to visit two academies in Daegu – my main gym, Dong gu BJJ, run by Bo Guk Seo, and Gaksan BJJ, run by Yune-ho Jeong. Both gyms are Daegu MMA (Machado Jiu Jitsu) affiliations. I train regularly in Dong gu branch – it’s 5 minutes by bike from the campus, so choice was pretty obvious. But sometimes when I have more time I also go to Gaksan, it takes me around 30-40minutes to get there by bike and subway.

Both gyms are run by top Korean brown belts, but the style of teaching is very different. Let’s start with my main gym. 

Bo Guk is a top Korean brown belt, he has been in Abu Dhabi as a blue and purple belt and he puts a lot of emphasis on mat time, a lot of rolling, positional sparrings and sparrings.

The training usually starts with short warm-up, some stretching, then he either shows few techniques or we get some time to drill our positions. Then, we have some positional sparrings, where usually higher belts start from the guard and after that we move to normal sparrings – usually 5 to 6 6-minutes rounds.

There are gi classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and no-gi on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5 pm, 7 pm and 9pm. In-between BJJ classes, some of the top guys do MMA training, either some striking or specific strength and conditioning.

Bo Guk’s style is all about heavy pressure passing and it’s clearly visible among his students too, they all have really good pressure. I get to roll with him almost at every training which is awesome and I have to say that he is an absolute beast. His positional dominance is amazing. When he gets to a dominant position i'm not getting out of there unless he lets me.

On the other hand there is Yune-ho’s gym, with totally different approach, he’s also one of the best Korean brown belts, he went to Abu Dhabi as a blue and purple belt and he’s actually going there again next week (good luck!).

I’ve been there only two times so far, but differences are clearly visible, Yune-ho is all about drilling, he puts a lot of emphasis on repetitions. Training starts with short warm up, then some simple warm up drills, then he shows several techniques with a lot of details. After techniques, it’s time for rolling.

While at Dong-gu BJJ, most of the top guys also do MMA and everyone does no-gi, at Gaksan, they are purely competition minded, they use a lot of open guard a lot of modern jiu jitsu and no-gi is very limited there.

But both gyms have one thing in common, those Koreans are really tough!

When coming to Korea I knew more or less what to expect. I read quite a lot about BJJ in Korea and I knew that they were tough, that standards are really high here. And that’s all true.

It’s really hard to get a blue belt here, it really takes times and dedication. And purple belt? It’s just another level.

I’m a fairly fresh purple belt and there are few blue belts that keep smashing me really badly, they are really good. They would easily be purple by western standards.

Some people call it sandbagging, but I wouldn’t call it like that, I’d rather call it high standards. I’m still not sure if it’s like that all over the country or just Daegu, but I believe that there are several reasons for that. However, those are just my assumptions... First of all I believe that in Korea the traditional martial art philosophy is still alive and they believe that you really have to earn your belt, through hard training and dedication. They do everything to keep the high standards and not let them water down. Secondly, most of the gyms in Daegu are run by Brown belts, that have been training really hard for years and it took them a very long time and a lot of hard work to advance through the ranks, so they are very careful promoting their students. It’s quite obvious that when more and more higher belts are awarded, the standards are slowly watering down. And it still has not happened in Daegu.

In my gym, there are around 4-6 blue belts per training, plenty of white belts, and sometimes some purple belts show up. Some of the blue belts train super hard. They are there every day from 17.00 till 22.00 doing several training sessions.

Below, there is the picture with Hae-jin (on my left) and Han-jin (on my right). Hae-jin is a super dedicated guy, he trains really hard and keeps smashing me all the time. Han-jin is the super flexible guy (I figured, that there is at least one of those super flexible guys in every gym J ), it's really hard to pass his guard.

 I still hope to visit some more gyms outside of Daegu in the near future, but with all the trips I have to make around the Korean peninsula, I really have quite a tight schedule here.