Shin Yul-Da

 

I met Yul in 1992 at The Oriental Arts Centre in Norwich . Only because they hadn't a clue what to do with him and, because I taught Korean Martial Arts, they thought I might know! 

 

I liked him as soon as I saw him. He was wild and looked as if he had a good sense of humour. Long hair and beard and dressed in traditional Korean monk's clothes (home-made as it turned out). I invited him to stay at our house and he accepted. He stayed almost a year!

 

This was all prior to me meeting Dr. Kimm and a strange thing happened that first time in America. I had left Yul with Nikki and the kids (Our youngest, Jos,  was only a few months old) and I was sitting in Baton Rouge with Do Ju Nim and a Mexican martial arts historian named Jesus Garcia. Jesus had been telling us of this crazy monk in Pusan, South Korea whom he had met last time he was there. I asked him if he could remember the monk's name. "Shin Yul-Da" he said!

 

       

 

We weren't too sure of Yul's proficiency in martial arts, but he had studied Tae Kyun at least and could pose a good photo with a sword!

 

Yul sat on a grading panel while he was here and the students performed brilliantly! Could have been because we told them there was a famous Korean master staying with us!

Grading before (left to right) Shin Yul-Da, Master Banham and Mr. Ade Fields is Sun Bae Abi Millings (left) at 11 years old.

Before he left, Yul designed two t-shirts for us. These became collectors items, particularly in America. We also had an article about him published in Taekwondo and Korean Martial Arts.

We have tried several times to contact Yul since he returned to Korea but so far, to no avail

Brush Painter Shin Yul-da
The Art in the Martial Arts
©1995 by Robert W. Young

In thousands of Buddhist temples of the Orient, exotic murals of battling deities and demons adorn countless square yards of wall space. Upon close inspection, one notices that a common theme throughout seems to be the martial arts. In fact, one will discover that the philosophies of nearly all Asia's true martial arts, at least at the deeper levels, are inseparable from the teachings of Buddhism.

It seems only natural that somewhere in Asia there exists a person who has combined those undeniable Buddhist influences, the traditional martial arts and Oriental painting techniques in one package. Such a man does, in fact, exist. His name is Shin Yul-da, and he just may be the sole surviving martial arts painter in all of Korea.

 

Shin exists as an oddity in modern Korean society. Because of government restrictions, most Koreans never even have the opportunity to set foot outside their own country. But Shin, a self-proclaimed "wandering student of life," traveled extensively in Europe, Nepal, Pakistan and India during his younger days.

At times penniless, Shin survived by using his wits to procure scraps of food and his amiable personality to strike up friendships with the locals. Too often he went hungry. But it was there, in those mysterious West Asian nations, that he discovered the ancient forms of meditation and breathing that were to become so important to him later in life.

Upon returning to his homeland, Shin found that he did not mesh with mainstream Korean society. The typical 10-hour-a-day manufacturing jobs which abound in its light-industry-based economy drove him crazy. Many times he tried the labor-intensive assignments, but always with the same unfortunate outcome.

Faced with few alternatives, Shin retreated to a remote mountain monastery, far removed from the temporal existence. There he studied "ki" (internal energy) development under an accomplished Buddhist monk for several years. Shin was able to extract a few of the monk's martial arts secrets during their long, strenuous hours of practice. He claims that the style was superficially similar to Chinese tai chi chuan because of its slow movements and outwardly deceptive appearance. "I don't know where the style came from, but that doesn't really matter," he explains. "What's most important is the way it affected my perceptions of harmony and balance." He says that those concepts are as applicable to art as they are to the martial arts.

While young Korean men tend to marry before the age of 28, Shin at 41 remains a bachelor by choice. "No Korean woman would put up with my way of life and the demands it places on me," he says. And he is probably correct. This artist lives alone in a traditional two-room house on the side of a mountain. In the summer there is no fan to keep cool, and in the winter there is no stove to keep warm. Often he awakens on frigid winter mornings to find bowls of water frozen solid beside his tatami-style sleeping place on the floor.

Shin is a natural-born story teller. Self-taught in English (for a time he actually taught it in a private institute), he spins endless tales of his adventures both in other lands and in his own. He tells of Buddhist priests possessing incredible powers of levitation and spirit travel, and recounts the mishaps of aged masters encountering gangs of young thieves, then calmly repelling them one-by-one with a single touch.

It was more than 10 years ago when Shin discovered his miraculous gift for painting. He started off working with oils, capturing traditional landscapes and still-life scenes on canvas. "But hundreds of such painters are doing exactly the same thing in Korea," he laments. "And by far the majority of them are living below the poverty level."

For that reason, Shin opted to specialize in brush painting. It is a decidedly Oriental style of art in which a solid bar of black ink is rubbed on an abrasive stone as water is added. The mixture is then applied to a piece of traditionally made rice paper. In brush painting, it is the all-important stroke and the minute differences in pressure on the brush that differentiate the novice from the expert.

The basic layout of each of Shin's painting is conceived in an all-night meditation session amid a blanket of smoke from sandalwood incense. The subjects that Shin creates bear a striking and purposeful resemblance to Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who founded Zen Buddhism and later systematized the Chinese fighting arts at Shaolin Temple. Each pose must necessarily be dynamic in nature. Shin insists that any static poses, for example a front stance with an upper block, simply would not convey his message. "I want to excite people with my work," he says. "I don't want to bore them with it."

The artist constantly searches for new sources of inspiration. At times he is allowed to observe monks training in the Buddhist martial arts, and often he visits a tae kyon gymnasium to study their traditional movements. Shin believes in only these two Korean styles; all others he disregards merely as imitations of the true martial arts.

Strategically placed along the side of each painting is a sample of his own calligraphy. Shin says that after having studied the traditional methods for several years, he remained dissatisfied with the results. Therefore, he created his own style using "han ja," Korean characters derived from Chinese pictographs.

His enigmatic messages pertain to the strength and durability of the flexible willow, and the amazing properties of bamboo, all of which can be imitated by the martial artist. It is important to note that if a single mistake is made during this, the final phase of painting, the entire work must be abandoned. In brush painting, there is no way to paint over an error.

One of the more fascinating tales told by Shin involves a harmless old gardener and a band of crazed outlaws. When the despicable hoodlums happen upon the old man's grove of saplings, they lose control and mindlessly destroy every young tree that their incensed eyes can locate.

For maximum dramatic effect, the Shin assumes the persona of the shattered old man and pretends to hobble through the ruined garden after the crazies depart. He sadly observes, "All of my strong and proud trees have been destroyed." Walking a little farther, Shin the actor points and sighs in relief, "Except for that little runt over there, still standing all by itself!"

This bit of philosophical wisdom, that the quiet and unobtrusive are rewarded with the greatest of freedoms--to be left alone--guides Shin's life. It has helped him to accept without anger or self-pity his inauspicious circumstance and less-than-wealthy situation in life. The struggling painter endures from day to day, following his spiritual calling with little notice from the world. Like the little tree, he is content to pass his time undisturbed by curious or meddlesome outsiders.