01/08/2026
“Hand strike way.” That’s what most practitioners are taught Soo Bahk Do means. It’s only the surface of it.
Soo is the hand — but in the older seal script, that character is drawn as a whole human body: head, spine, tailbone, arms and legs. Bahk means to pound, to turn over, to cultivate: the farmer working soil, the smith folding steel. And Soo is right there on the left of it, as the hand radical — a person, changed. Do is a head moving along a road. The path, and the walking of it.
The way of cultivating the whole human being.
The seal script calligraphy — brushed by D.K. Jang Sa Bom Nim, who researched all of this — is in the full article, along with a free PDF.
Which reading were you taught first? 👇