Hwang's Tae Kwon DO Martial

Excellent instructors. Other reviews here mention the large class sizes. However, this is variable depending on the time and day of the class. They offer several classes each day (except Fridays). Some classes are big, and some are small, mainly because they are pretty flexible to accommodate your schedule. Lessons are twice a week, and if you cannot make it on your scheduled day and time, you can ask to switch to another class just for that week. They always request that you call ahead to see if there is room, but invariably, some parents just show up at another time slot. This can make the class size big, but I've never seen them turn students away because of it. They seem to understand that sometimes juggling a kid's activity schedule can be difficult. There is also the option of coming to a "make-up" class on Saturday mornings if you miss a day during the week. The instructors are good with kids, and accept students as young as 4. In addition to TKD, they also teach respect for parents and importance of school. Kids are tested on "home rules" during each belt test (eg. keeping your room clean, respecting your elders, being nice to siblings, etc). They also have an after-school program, and will pick up a student from school, and bring them to the dojang.

My feeling about this school is that it was about money and flash more than learning life skills and a martial art. Master Huang and the school appears to be too grandiose and not humble. Not much concern about the development of the student but more concern about the monetary success of the school. Also, 65 percent of class time is spent just doing jumping jacks and jogging. Sparring is useless since it is always LIGHT CONTACT. Class sizes are too big for the money you pay. Often times, the students just train each other than receiving instructor guidance. Many of the instructors are true professionals.....just too bad the work for Master Huang's school. Too flashy for me. Lots of packaging.....not much content!!!!!

The school is professionally run and most of the instructors are highly skilled and dedicated. The kids classes are enjoyable and kids friendly. They even attempt to teach some life lessons to the kids and organized competition between TKD schools in the region. All these are good aspects that they should maintain. My biggest complain for the school would be the HUGE class sizes. It seems that they just keep growing without turning any parents down for kids enrollment. This brings down the level of personal attention between the instructors and students. Second issue with the school is that they seem to be afraid to fail any student during belt tests. Perhaps they think that parents would be mad if their kids fail. This causes the instructors to focus ALOT on poomsae (forms) patterns to make the kids remember the steps during lessons. When I was learning TKD as a kid, in another school, our class size was much smaller and we were expected to learn and remember the steps ourselves. If we don't practice and remember our poomsae, we can actually fail our belt tests. For those kids that exceeded expectations during the tests, they are rewarded with double belt promotion. This caused us to be stressed out enough to actually practice hard. In Hwangs, the kids are sort of "carried through" each belt test by the instructors as the instructors still demo the form pattern step-by-step to the kids during the tests. In the unlikely chance that some kids still fail, they can retake the test again a week later. I have also never seen any kid been awarded with double belt promotion so it is a little "socialistic". This leads to my concern about the quality of higher level belts in the school, especially in the areas of the quality of their kicks and sparring. There is just not enough time for kicking practices in Hwangs. I would rather that they share out a URL for correct poomsae (forms) demo video and have the kids learn them at home. The classes should be focused more on aspects that are hard for the kids to learn themselves like the quality of their kicks, blocks, stances, sparring techniques, the individual weaknesses of each kid and instructors should target these weaknesses to help them improve rather than memorizing the pattern itself since that can be learnt by the students at home through watching a video than to waste the precious lesson time on. In summary, they did do a little of what I suggested above but not enough, as the classes are so huge and they spent way too much time during lessons teaching them to remember each step of the poomsae while neglecting the other important aspects of learning TKD.

My son worked with another Grandmaster in a different city for six years. While that was a good experience with the other Master, I am exceptionally pleased with the level of instruction that I see consistently at Hwang's Taekwondo Academy in Redmond. Rather than let his instructors do all of the teaching, this Grandmaster is very actively involved directly one-on-one with the teaching of each student. The regular instructors are also of very high quality also. There is a very positive atmosphere and the students (toddlers to adults) have a very good morale and their learning is actively encouraged. This school is also involved in hosting the Washington Open TKD Championship and it has other positive facets (they pick up students to participate in their after school program for example).

Master Hwang taught both our children, my husband and myself. His qualification as a grandmaster is authentic and exceptional. The dojang provided consistent and good quality instructions at a fair pricing system. We recommend people to join this family like organization to learn serious Taekwondo.