A rare archival film from the 1920s has emerged showing Kim Won-bo, a Korean independence activist, demonstrating Subak—an indigenous combat system that challenges narratives about the origins of Korean martial arts.
The footage, verified by the Korean Film Archive (KOFA), features Kim, who was imprisoned in 1919 for his resistance against Japanese colonial rule. Beyond his activism, he practiced Subak, a striking and grappling system that predates modern martial arts like Taekwondo by decades.
For years, debate has surrounded whether Korea maintained organized combat systems before the mid-20th century, when Taekwondo emerged as a synthesis of Korean tradition and Japanese karate influences during the post-liberation period. This archival evidence provides empirical documentation of a sophisticated indigenous system operating during the colonial era.
The film shows distinctive techniques that differ markedly from later Korean martial arts. Particularly notable is what practitioners call the "topknot control"—seizing the opponent's neck and collar area where the traditional sangtu (topknot) would have been worn to disrupt balance before striking. The system emphasizes practical leverage and close-quarter combat efficiency rather than the high-kicking sport techniques that characterize modern Taekwondo.
The footage's significance extends beyond martial arts history into the broader narrative of cultural erasure during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Japanese authorities systematically suppressed Korean cultural practices, from language instruction to traditional customs, as part of assimilation policies. Many indigenous practices survived only in fragmented form or through underground transmission.
South Korea has invested substantial resources in recent decades to recover and revitalize pre-colonial cultural traditions. The National Intangible Heritage Center works to document practices that survived colonialism, while academic institutions have undertaken projects to recover historical records scattered across international archives.
The Subak footage contributes to this recovery effort by providing visual documentation of a practice that might otherwise have been lost to history. Unlike written records, which can be destroyed or reinterpreted, film offers direct evidence of how techniques were actually performed.
Researchers are now analyzing the biomechanics of the movements shown in the footage, comparing them to contemporary martial arts and historical descriptions of Korean combat systems from the Joseon Dynasty. The collaborative analysis involves martial arts practitioners and historians working to understand both the technical elements and their cultural context.
The discovery also raises questions about what other cultural practices may have been lost during colonialism. If a combat system as physically visible as Subak nearly disappeared from historical memory, more subtle cultural traditions may have vanished entirely without documentation.
In Korea, as across dynamic Asian economies, cultural exports and technological leadership reshape global perceptions—even as security tensions persist. South Korea's global soft power today rests largely on contemporary innovations—K-pop, film, technology—yet the nation's cultural confidence also draws from recovered connections to pre-colonial heritage. The Subak footage represents one thread in that complex tapestry of remembering and reconstruction.
