Photos by Jeffrey S. Hall Photography
The walls of the Oriental Martial Arts College headquarters, located in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, are lined with martial arts awards and memorabilia: an extensive Bruce Lee collection, articles on collaborations with the Arnold Sports Festival, portraits and quotes from icons of taekwondo and karate. Between classes, it’s a quiet, contemplative building – a mirror of its founder, Grandmaster Joon Pyo Choi, a 10th-degree black belt in taekwondo.
Choi speaks with a calm, reserved tone. His office – featuring more awards and memorabilia, including recognitions from Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, mementos from coaching with the United States’ first Olympic taekwondo team in 1988 – reflects a life of much greater accomplishment and ambition than his humble personality would suggest.
Born in Korea in 1945, Choi grew up during a tumultuous time in the region. At a young age, Choi’s family fled to a refugee camp in the south and his father, who had been taken prisoner and sent for execution as a communist resistor, would later miraculously reunite with the family.
“I wanted to save the world.” - Joon P. Choi
It was in the barren environment of the refugee camps that Choi began to practice martial arts; his uncle taught him self-defense for the commonplace street fights that occurred between locals and refugees. That grew into a lifelong passion for taekwondo, the values represented by the martial arts, and sharing his knowledge and experience with others.
“I had hundreds of street fights, like a daily chore,” Choi recalls. “The street was full of hatred and anger because of starvation.”
Today, Choi is an elite martial artist – he estimates there are less than 50 10th degree black belts in the world – who prides his Oriental Martial Arts College as an international source for personal development. Choi believes that the martial arts are a practice of peace and has dedicated his life to sharing the discipline, ethics, and respect that they teach.
“It’s very contradicting to what people understand,” he explains. “To maintain the peace, you have got to have the power to stop the fight.”
At a young age, his size made him a popular target with bullies. Choi quickly found belonging and purpose in the martial arts. He used taekwondo as a means of protecting himself, “saving lives,” as he describes it.
“My lifestyle was protecting me from others and then protecting others,” Choi says. “I wanted to save the world.”
By the end of high school, Choi had already begun teaching martial arts and had amassed roughly 100 students in his freshman year of college.
“I’ve never had another job in my life,” Choi says. “I was a taekwondo teacher – period.”
A chance invitation from a friend in the martial arts community led Choi to make a cross-continental move after graduating college to become an instructor in the U.S. After a brief period teaching out of Madison, Indiana – Choi laughs, recalling believing he was going to the comparatively massive Madison, Wisconsin – Choi worked at a car wash in Tennessee to save money for a martial arts studio.
Now a New Albany resident, Choi moved to Columbus in 1972 and founded the Oriental Martial Arts College, which has become one of the defining works of his life.
“I love Ohio,” Choi says. “I’ve had success. I’ve taught about 25,000 people here.”
Choi’s outlook on the program goes beyond fighting skills taught in taekwondo, weaponry or self-defense classes. In his youth, Choi recalls a tense encounter with a street gang in which his fighting left one man in a coma for three days. After encounters like that, Choi now believes that martial arts should save lives – not take them – and he began a study of acupuncture for healing purposes. Choi similarly studies meditation, music and art as ways to improve or soften his soul.
The Oriental Martial Arts College’s Kimoodo healing classes bring Choi’s knowledge across fields together to teach the art of healing and rehabilitation. Choi’s proudest accomplishment, however, is the school’s Little Tigers Program, which teaches martial arts and its principles of discipline to children ages 3-6.
“No one can teach (ages) 3 and 4, I wanted to find a way,” Choi says. “My concept of martial arts school is to provide a place where children become happy and healthy, young become strong and wise.”
Cameron Carr is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
