What was created first Karate Tae Kwon Do or Kung Fu?

Answer 1

While they have roots in ancient times, the chronological order is a rather complex issue because the origin of names as opposed to the content they describe do not match. Each of these terms were created in modern times to describe arts that had been practiced or being developed long before the label was ever applied. Also, each of these educational systems are thusly identified as variations of the Asian Martial Art because of their unique blend of physical combat (mostly unarmed) with spiritual enlightenment, and a moral code of conduct that developed over mutual time periods in each country separately, with influences back and forth from each other.

Kung Fu is a 20th century term describing Chinese systems that combined philosophies mostly found in the Shaolin Temples with the physical combat imitating the fighting skills of animals. The earlier term of wushu is a general label for "martial art" referring to the Shaolin system that may have been in practice in the early 7th century A.D., but still having roots of less codified combat skills dating back much further.

The term "Karate" has a very similar, mutating origin. When the Chinese hand fighting was introduced to island Okinawa (formerly Ryukyu Kingdom) in the early 19th century, they refined the skills according to their own preferences and simply called it "te" (meaning "hand" often called "Okinawa-te"). However, in order to distinguish their system from the earlier Chinese hand fighting of China's T'ang Dynasty, they used the prefix of "kara" (meaning ancient china or T'ang China), and "te" to form the term "Kara-te." As it spread into Japan, the term Karate became a generic label for all unarmed combat, so Shotokan founder, Gitchen Funakoshi suggested a change of the Chinese characters to a translation of "kara" that meant "empty." Thus, there are different labels for "Kara-te" of China, Okinawa-te, and "karate-do" of Japan.

The Korean term of "Taekwondo" was first introduced in 1955 as an umbrella term to identify the newly formed unification of all Korean methods of unarmed combat into one system. While this formation was partially influenced by later developments of Japanese Karate-do under Funakoshi, it was mostly rooted in the native Korean kicking skills found in the ancient Tae Kkyeon and Subak dating back to the 1st century B.C., along with the philosophies and training methods of the 7th century Hwarang and modern Korean Hapkido and Yudo. It was also highly influenced by a direct connection to the Chinese hand fighting in the form of Tangsudo, the term coined by Chung Do Kwan's founder, Won-Kuk Lee, before it was changed to Taekwondo.