Sabeom, Sahyeon and Saseong -- The deeper meanings...

[sanko...@gmail.com]

Have you ever wondered about the titles we use in ITF Taekwon-Do?

Sabeom as we all know, means Instructor and is used for 4th to 6th Dan
instructors. The syllable “Sa-” means teacher, from “Kyosa”. The
second syllable “-beom”, sometimes written as “-bum”, actually means
model. The obvious application is that the sabeom is a “teacher after
which we should model” ourselves. In other words, the students should
try to emulate the instructor’s technique. The title sabeom is also
used in other sports, and can probably be best translated into English
as coach.

The “Boo” in Boosabeom literally means assistant; i.e. assistant
coach. Boosabeom, of course, is used for 1st Dan through 3rd Dan.

For a master, which is a 7th and 8th Dan, we use the title sahyeon,
sometimes written in English as sahyun. Again, “sa-” means teacher,
but the syllable “-hyeon” means “a good person”. The implication is
that the master is not merely a technical teacher, but actually a
moral-teacher. The syllable can also mean “the present”.
Philosophically understood, the master is a teacher of the moment.

Lastly, the 9th Dan grandmaster is called “saseong”. Once again “sa-”
means teacher. In this case, the second syllable “seong” means sage. A
sage is a mentor in spiritual and philosophical topics, with wisdom
that came through age and experience. In Taekwon-Do the grandmaster is
not merely a technical teacher, nor just a moral teacher, but also a
teacher of philosophy.

I hope this explanation gives you a better appreciation of the terms
sabeom, sahyeon and saseong, which are unique to ITF Taekwon-Do. (WTF
Taekwon-Do only use sabeom in Korean.)

ooOoo

Some notes on pronunciation.

“Sa-” is pronounced the same as the first part of the English word
“suck”.

“-beom” is pronounced like the English word “bomb”

The “h” in “-hyeon” should be aspirated (pronounced with lots of air).
The “eon” part is pronounced like the English word “on”. Remember to
include the “y” sound at the beginning of the vowel.

Lastly “-seong”, in saseong, sounds like the English word “song”.

Regards,
Sanko

[Chris van der Merwe]

That was very nice, thank you Sanko.  I am aware that writing Korean (Hangul) in English is done more phonetically than based on prescribed rules of spelling and grammar, but is there any "standard" that we can follow so that I can be sure whether to write (for example) "Sabum" or "Sabeom"?