In 1936, at the young age of 22, a Korean Soo Bak Do master by the name of Hwang Kee left Korea during the Japanese occupation of his country and traveled up into Manjoo (southern) China to continue his training, as the oppressive Japanese did not allow the Koreans to continue their martial arts training and teaching. Having perfected his kicking prowess from his Soo Bak Do training, Hwang Kee trained with Chinese gung fu stylists and began to incorporate the “flowing hand” movements of the gung fu system with his kicking techiques. Later, Hwang Kee was exposed to the traditional hard-style kata (form) of the Japanese karate system Shotokan (these are the same forms that the Japanese adopted from the Okinawan Shorin Ryu system, for most of their open-hand karate systems). Master Hwang incorporated variations of these hard style forms into his training and began formulating a new art that harnessed the power and flexibility of the two main styles of martial arts: the soft style of the Chinese gung fu systems, and the hard style of the Japanese/Okinawan systems, with his kicking repertoire of Soo Bak do.