TONG-IL: BREAKING BOARDS, BRICKS, AND BORDERS
Short Synopsis
In TONG-IL, martial arts builds a bridge between enemy nations as Grandmaster Jung sponsors the North Korean Taekwon-Do demonstration team for an historic first-ever performance tour of the United States. We journey through Jung's immigrant rags-to-riches tale, into North Korea, the most closed society on Earth, and on the 2007 Taekwon-Do Goodwill Tour that awed and entertained thousands across America.
Long Synopsis
In TONG-IL: BREAKING BOARDS, BRICKS, AND BORDERS, martial arts takes center stage as Woo-Jin Jung attempts to use Taekwon-Do to help unify his native country of Korea and build cultural bridges between battling nations.
Korea is a divided country in which there has been no formal peace treaty since the end of the Korean War in 1953; resulting in a communist North backed by the former Soviet Union, and a capitalist South backed by the United States. Taekwon-Do is the indigenous martial art and national sport of Korea, created in 1955, and today enjoys a practitioner base of tens of millions of people worldwide.
The chilling wind and snow of the American heartland bites at his bones as Woo-Jin Jung leaves the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, airport in December of 1971. With nothing but thirty-five dollars and lint in his pocket, martial arts skills, and eastern spirit, he hopes to achieve the western dream in the land of opportunity. He soon finds that his path will be far from easy being a fish out of water and speaking scant English.
Working at a gas station washing car windows and filling up gas tanks was bringing in far too little money for Jung to survive and support his family who came soon after. Desperate, he asked co-workers to help him open a dojang (Korean for gym) so he could teach martial arts. Diminutive in size, his co-workers taunted him instead and offered help only if he could prove himself. John and two others searched a creek nearby the gas station and found four red-clay bricks which they set up on the ground. "My fate, my life was on that demonstration. Stay here or go back to Korea penniless. Either my hand was going to get broken or the bricks would," Jung recalls, knowing he had never broken anything other than wood boards. With eyes closed, Jung lets out a yell as his hand first splits air - then splits the bricks. He would soon open his first dojang. This was certainly not the end, but in fact, the beginning of many beginnings of new struggles.
Thirty-five years later, in the wake of a nuclear weapons stand-off between North Korea and the international community, the United States and South Korea, Grandmaster Jung and a team of Taekwondo martial artists sponsor a delegation of eighteen North Koreans on a five-city thirteen-day performance tour of the United States. October 04, 2007, marked the first time in history that North Koreans had stepped foot into America for a cultural exchange of this significance. TONG-IL, the Korean word for "unification," is a feature documentary that takes us through Grandmaster Jung's biography, an immigrant rags-to-riches tale, into North Korea, the most closed and isolated society on Earth, and on the 2007 Taekwon-Do Goodwill Tour that awed and entertained thousands across America. For these martial artists, the act of breaking is the way to bringing people together and pursuing the Taekwon-Do oath of building a more peaceful world.
Project Background
TONG-IL: BREAKING BOARDS, BRICKS, AND BORDERS is actually the second film that we began to produce after two years of working on a documentary called OUR MORAL ARMOR. Legacy Unity Vision Films, LLC, was founded by Hoss Rafaty in late 2004 after he approached me with helping him to make a short form documentary about the history of Taekwon-Do. After I came onboard, that short film transformed into a feature length film now known as OUR MORAL ARMOR.
During my research and production for OUR MORAL ARMOR I came across Woo-Jin Jung, a pioneer Taekwon-Do grand master, whose inspiring story tied into the history documentary. Likewise, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or "North Korea" as most Westerners know it, as a nation also plays a pivotal role in the history of TKD. In 2006, I would have the opportunity, or near-opportunity I should say, to include both of those elements into OUR MORAL ARMOR.
During the summer of 2006 I came across a blog that was advertising what was then dubbed the "2006 North Korea USA Goodwill Tour." Supposedly, a North Korean team of TKD demonstrators were going to embark on an historic first-ever seven city performance tour of the United States in early October of the same year. I wanted to be able to record for our film so I began to look into it and discovered that Grand Master Woo-Jin Jung was the main figure behind the tour. I contacted TaeKwonDo Times Magazine, of which GM Jung is the owner, in order to get in touch with him. At the same time, I contacted a New Yorker named George Vitale whose name had come up in my research as I had found he was also connected with the Goodwill Tour organizers. I touched base with both sources and told them what my partners and I were doing and they seemed interested in letting me into their world.
In September I flew up to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for a TKD Times black belt seminar to meet and pre-interview GM Jung and to also meet George Vitale since he would be in attendance. I flew up there alone with my equipment with the intent of doing a one-man-band interview shoot. George was very enthusiastic about our project so I asked him if he wanted to help me with the interview. Being a "TKD geek" he quickly agreed and I gave him a fifteen-minute film school on doing interviews. He did well and I later learned, over some beers, that he had extensive knowledge about the history of TKD. So I asked him if he wanted to come onboard to help with the research. He accepted and since then George has become more integral to our projects, accompanying me on most travels and helping with the production as well as co-conducting most of the interviews.
Well, I got the greenlight to accompany GM Jung and the Goodwill Tour but everything fell apart under the volatile political climate and the tour was cancelled just days before the North Koreans were to fly to the United States. So now, I was at a loss since I wouldn't get interviews and footage of the North Koreans. After being thoroughly disappointed about the failure of the 2006 North Korea USA Goodwill Tour, I decided to be more proactive. If the North Koreans couldn't come here then I would go to them! But how? It's nearly impossible for an American, much less an American media maker, to get an allowance to enter the DPRK.
Enter again: George Vitale. I knew George had been to the DPRK twice before as part of a TKD delegation, in 1989 and in 2006, and had good relationships with the officials and leaders of the North Korean International TKD Federation. So I threw it out to him in April of 2007 to use his connections. We had nothing to lose, but neither of us truly thought that they would allow me into the country being an American filmmaker. After some rapid back-and-forth communications, to our amazement, George and I got official invitations to go in June. I had become one of a small handful of filmmakers in the world, and only one of two American filmmakers, ever allowed into North Korea to film about the country.
We had an enjoyably productive trip to Beijing and the DPRK and some of our questions to them touched on the failure of the 2006 Goodwill Tour and if the North Koreans would still be willing to come to the USA if the opportunity arose. Their answer was positive. We also knew GM Jung and his team were continuing efforts to try to make a TKD cultural exchange happen in 2007.
So between the time that we got our allowance to travel and film in the DPRK in June until the landing of the North Korean delegation in Los Angeles' airport in October of 2007, I decided that GM Jung's story, the Goodwill efforts, and the eventual tour would be too large to fully treat within OUR MORAL ARMOR. That's when I decided that there was more than enough there to be a film in itself. My LUV Films' partners agreed to back me and GM Jung agreed to have his life treated in a documentary. And that's how TONG-IL, the film, came to be.
For those of you who don't know, "tong-il" is the English spelling of the Korean word meaning "unification." TONG-IL, the documentary, is both a biographical film and a commentary about the current USA/North Korea/South Korea dialogue. In a decidedly passive way, it attempts to dispel general characterizations of those nations as viewed from all sides. The North Koreans view us as imperialist war-mongers. And the North Koreans are, as former President Bush described them in his 2002 State of the Union address, one of the three nations that form the "Axis of Evil." Politics aside, people are people and most people would prefer peace over war. I hope. At least the TKD people I am making the film about feel that way. As GM Jung often declares in his broken English way, "I'm not politic!" - meaning he's not a political person.
GM Jung's own life is characterized by an arc of hardship, growth, success, and then goodwill unto others through his dedication to Taekwon-Do. And he firmly believes that differing ideological boundaries can be overcome through the practice of the martial art. I myself, do not practice any martial arts, but have seen that it can play a role, no matter how large or small, in bridging social and cultural differences. So hopefully, Americans, North Koreans, and South Koreans, martial artists or not, will be able to see the film and step out of their political ideologies for a couple of hours and experience what we experienced on the 2007 TKD Goodwill Tour. Peace between our nations can not occur without trust, and it must begin with individuals. It takes courage to build trust where it was once destroyed and the courage to start can be very difficult, but the successful results are infinitely fulfilling.
So will the goodwill created by this martial arts community manifest into a larger movement, beyond the borders of the martial arts world? For GM Jung and those involved with him, the process still continues. We'll just have to wait and see.
Luan Van Le
January 12, 2010
Filmmaking Team
Director, Producer, Editor
Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Luan immigrated to the United States at an early age with his immediate family near the end of the Vietnam War. Showing great interest and technical potential in the visual arts as a child, he would continue to develop and excel as an artist in personal, academic, and professional settings. He has studied drawing and fine arts, design and architecture, computer graphics, and film production in Texas, New York, and Paris, France, at institutions such as the University of North Texas, North Lake College, Parsons School of Design, and the Pratt Institute School of Architecture. Luan also likes to produce and record music. He currently lives in Arlington, Texas, and TONG-IL is his first feature length film.
Hoss Rafaty
Executive Producer
Hoss immigrated to the United States from Iran at the age of twenty-one. In 1986 he co-founded Yumi Ice Cream Company in Dallas, Texas, which has since grown into a world class ice cream distribution enterprise with operations in each of the major cities of Texas and boasts annual revenues of over fifty million dollars. Introduced to Taekwon-Do in 2001 and now a 3rd degree black belt, he felt compelled to learn more about the history of the martial art. This led to the desire to make a documentary about the subject, the founding of Legacy Unity Vision Films, LLC, and the recruiting of his arts and entertainment attorney wife, Vesna Rafaty, and Luan Van Le. OUR MORAL ARMOR, a film about the history of Taekwon-Do, was the first project to go into production in 2005 with TONG-IL beginning in 2007. Hoss has two sons and currently lives in Dallas, Texas.
George Vitale
Co-Producer
George Vitale is a senior Master in Taekwon-Do. His training started in the early 1970s and has spanned 5 decades. Seeking to expand and share knowledge, he has traveled to over 40 nations around the world. George draws upon a strong academic education in research that culminated in earning a Master of Arts degree and then attending a doctoral program for two additional years. He combines this with investigative skills acquired as a result of the experience and training received as a police supervisor during his 24 year career as a senior investigator with the New York State Troopers Bureau of Criminal Investigation. His background has led to contributions in both research and production on both LUV Films' documentaries.
Yoni Maron
Cinematographer
Yonatan Maron was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel, and lived in New York City from 2000 to 2009 where he graduated from FIT's photography program. He participated in photography and mixed media group shows and later moved into work as a cinematographer and camera assistant in New York's indie film industry. He brings a strong dedication to the demanding process of documentary filmmaking and has a special interest in social and political themes. He currently lives in Tel Aviv where he continues to work as a cinematographer and is in production for his directorial debut short film. Yoni also pursues activities such as illustration, Sumi-e painting, graphic design, and music production.
Vesna Rafaty
Director of Business and Legal Affairs
Vesna immigrated to the United States from former Yugoslavia in 1970 with her parents and sister. She earned a degree in chemical engineering at Case Institute of Technology of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Recruited by Texaco directly from Case, Vesna relocated to Beaumont, Texas, in 1981. Vesna moved to Dallas in 1984 where she married Hoss Rafaty and started a family. Her early professional career spans fourteen years and includes roles as research chemical engineer at Texaco, sanitarian supervisor at the City of Dallas, and manufacturing manager with Johnson & Johnson Medical, Inc. In 2002 Vesna earned a juris doctorate from Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, passed the Texas Bar, and founded a Dallas-based practice in intellectual property law with a focus in patents and arts & entertainment. In 2009 she was admitted to practice law in New York and is in the process of establishing a second office there. Vesna is passionate about using her tireless energy and diverse talents to support innovators and emerging artists.
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