Why I left, and why I'm here.
This entry was posted on 2/5/2006 9:29 PM and is filed under Introduction.
First off, check out a recent news report from Boston.
Dahn Hak is suffering one of the side effects of running a successful cult: People who haven't been screened and primed for membership are looking at their actions and asking questions. John C. Kim's organization had a similar experience in Chicago in the late eighties, which led to an extensive television investigative report, a lot of negative publicity and, eventually, IRS raids and arrests in the nineties.
Nowadays, Oom Yung Doe is much smaller and appears to be struggling to keep their training centers open. A lot of their core group fell away over the years, Kim is aging, and renewed success would bring scrutiny like the old days (worse, now that they have a criminal record), so its better to fly below radar. They are now focusing on fast cash inflow (or I should say upflow) risking a high turnover rate. In earlier days, members were trained and scrutinized for a long, long time before they were accepted as "clear" and "openminded" enough to be exposed to the inner workings of the cult. On one hand, they no longer have the manpower to pull that off; on the other hand, a pyramid scheme leaves behind dupes who overpaid and have little recourse but to blame themselves for being stupid. Both work well for Oom Yung Doe to set up small training centers to make a lot of money quickly, close their schools once they've burned out, and move on to open new schools on the shoulders of new dupes.
I was a student at Oom Yung Doe during these modern times. My tenure there was relatively short. It was a convenient location for a regular exercise regime, I started enjoying it, I got more and more involved over a few years. Apparently, something about me gives people the impression that I come from big money even though I'm usually pretty broke :-) I also developed an interest in martial arts as I began to see it as more than just exercise, and soon got involved in instructor training on a relatively fast track. More and more "weirdness" began popping up as I was more "trusted". At first I rationalized them on a case by case basis: Think positive, and you reap positive. They're cutting corners right now, because the school isn't making enough money, but after they enroll enough students, they'll start maintaining the books better. Some of the owners are making bad decisions, but on the whole, they're just trying to build up a financially secure business so that martial arts instructors can rely on it as a full time career. Its not my life, so its not my problem.
Eventually, the more you see, the more patterns emerge. You see an instructor disappear without saying a word to anyone ... you wonder what that was all about. You see an errant instructor being held as a scapegoat for decisions that were made by their superiors. You see another instructor being chastised for "revealing" things that were mere honesty. You wonder why higher belts who seem like good, caring people repeatedly try to manipulate students. You see questions being evaded or answered with perverse, self-serving logic. You see double standards in how the organization views itself versus the rest of the world that refutes its pantheon.
At first, you think you can change things by upholding good standards yourself. If its just a few bad apples who are muddying the water, that may work. Although OYD members are mostly segregated by rank, I am a sociable person and got to know closely a few instructors who had been in OYD for 10-20 years. Since I did not have the long term conditioning they had, and had the benefit of not having invested that much time or money into OYD, I could see how badly they had been used, for next to nothing in return. Eventually you realize that its not just a few bad apples, its the way the system is designed. Whatever negativity emerges is the inevitable consequence of the principles followed. The principles that drive OYD are rooted in power, control and greed.
An oft-repeated catch phrase in OYD is "What you see is what you can achieve." Once I saw all of this, there was nothing left to achieve.
So I left.
Most people who leave OYD go on to rebuild their lives on their own. People learn through their own experiences, they say. They won't understand that they're being conned until they get burned themselves. I can see the truth in that. Nevertheless, its a waste of human lives. As a lover of Eastern culture and philosophies, I am offended by organizations like OYD and other cults that abuse the beauty inherent in martial arts and spirituality. As a person, I am offended by the exploitation of naive individuals. So, even though Oom Yung Doe is not part of my life anymore, it is still a problem.
So I write.
