Rhee Jhoon-goo (Korean: 이준구; Hanja: 李俊九, January 7, 1932 – April 30, 2018), commonly known as Jhoon Rhee, was a Korean-American taekwondo partitioner. He is widely recognized as the "father of American taekwondo" for introducing this martial art to the U.S. after arriving there in the 1950s.[5][6] He was a 10th dan black belt[6] and held the title of Grandmaster.
Rhee was born on January 7, 1932, in Asan, Korea, during the period of Japanese occupation.[7] He began training in the martial arts at age 13 in 1945 without his father's knowledge.[8] Rhee received martial art training from Nam Tae Hi and graduated from the Chung Do Kwan.[1] While an officer in the Korean Army, he went to the U.S. to attend Southwest Texas State College in 1956, and later returned to attend Texas to attend the University of Texas at Austin for an engineering degree.[9]
During the 1960s, Rhee befriended Bruce Lee—a relationship from which they both benefited as martial artists.[2] Lee taught Rhee an extraordinarily fast punch considered almost impossible to block, something Rhee named the "accupunch".[3] During his study in Texas, Rhee issued his first U.S.-awarded black belt to Pat Burleson and his first fully US-trained student was Allen Steen, both of whom teamed up to establish the influential Southwest Black Belt Association (later the American Black Belt Association), resulting in many champions. Upon graduation from college, Rhee relocated to the East Coast and opened his first studio in the U.S. 1962 in Washington, D.C., and over time expanded to 11 studios in the DC Metro area.[10]
In the mid-1980s, Rhee operated a network of 11 martial arts studios across the Washington, D.C., region.[11] Rhee was well known in the D.C. area for a television commercial with a jingle by Nils Lofgren and Rhee's daughter uttering the catchphrase "Nobody bothers me," followed by his son saying "Nobody bothers me, either."[12] In 2000, Rhee was the only Korean-American ranked among the 203 most recognized immigrants to the country by the National Immigrant Forum and Immigration and Naturalization Services.[5]
Rhee was inducted into the Taekwondo Hall of Fame in 2007,[13] in which he is listed as both the pioneer of American taekwondo and taekwondo in Russia'.[14] Rhee is listed as a pioneer in the U.S. (1950s, 60s and 70s) in Chang Keun Choi's list of taekwondo pioneers.[15]
^Taekwondo Hall of Fame 2007 Banquet Retrieved on 12 January 2008. (Although the reference's address contains "2006," the event was actually held in 2007.)
