Grandmaster Nam Tae-Hi, who passed away on Nov. 7, 2013, came as close to being superhuman as was humanly possible. A lot has been written about his martial arts power, fighting abilities and leadership in Taekwon-Do and Taekwondo – in all styles. The last time that I interviewed him, I asked about a controversial technique, the “straight-fingertip strike” or “spearhand,” which was supposed to puncture a person’s skin and which he’d used during a battle in the Korean War (in 1951). I’d written about the horrific scene and technique in chapter 4 of my book, A Killing Art, and a couple of readers laughed at the notion that fingers could puncture skin. In this video, from 2012, I asked Nam if his hand had actually pierced someone, and he cried as he told me about the 1951 war scene that he miraculously survived. I’ll never forget this interview or the one in 2001, when I asked him if such a technique were possible, and he replied in a calm voice: “You cannot stay in the opponent’s stomach. You have another opponent, maybe. And though you made a hole in the first man’s body, it does not mean your opponent will stay still; he will still punch and kick. Pull back and prepare the next action.” It was then that I realized the difference between training now and sixty years ago, between the part-time hobby of learning a martial art and his full-time job of teaching a killing art in the 1950s and 1960s. His 1951 battle was traumatic, and I mention it only to show his power:
