From 1910 until 1939, many Koreans migrated to Japan and were exposed to Japanese martial arts. After regaining independence from Japan, many Korean martial arts schools were founded by masters with training in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean martial arts.
Won Kuk Lee, a Korean student of Funakoshi founded the first Korean Karate school in 1944-5 called Chung Do Kwan. Similar "Kwan" schools cropped up in the late 1940s.
These martial arts were initially called Tang Soo Do and eventually renamed Taekwondo by Choi Hong Hi with a committee of Korean masters.
Choi was a significant figure in taekwondo history, who studied Korean Karate under these early masters and worked toward unifying a Korean national martial art.
Karate also provided an important comparative model for the early founders of taekwondo in the formalization of their art including kata and the belt rank system.
The early forms (Kata) followed the choreography of the Japanese Kata. Eventually original Korean forms (poomse, hyung) were developed by individual schools and associations.
Although WTF (Olympic) and ITF forms are prevalent throughout the taekwondo world, there are still many "traditional" taekwondo and tang soo do schools where Japanese kihon and kata are regularly practiced as they were originally conveyed to Won Kuk Lee and his contemporaries from Master Funakoshi.
