From 1999 to early 2000, high-speed internet began spreading across South Korea.
It was the era when various portal sites such as Yahoo, Naver, and Interpark competed fiercely to dominate the internet screen.
Instead of a modem sound, the constantly connected internet screen became familiar, and the way people searched for information itself was changing.
That seems to have been the turning point.
If you searched for a martial art called Aikido, only a handful of results would come up.
www.aikido.co.kr — today’s Korea Aikido Federation.
At that time, I was still a young child.
Even so, Jeju was one of the few places where you could get information about Aikido.
I wonder how much the internet has changed since then….
Perhaps if the internet hadn’t existed, there might not have been Aikido in Jeju even now.
Because Jeju is an island, there was almost no way to learn about training session news or a teacher’s instruction other than through that homepage.
Thanks to the fledgling internet, I was able to find out where in Korea the martial art called Aikido had started and by whom, and using that information as a stepping stone, I too was able to begin training in Aikido. I am still training in Aikido today, but if I trace back my starting point, it all lines up with the moment I first visited that homepage in front of the monitor back then.
At that time, the passion of people who wanted to learn Aikido was burning bright.
In particular, the passion of the directors who ran gyms in every corner of the country was remarkable.
On the Korea Aikido Federation homepage, whenever various training sessions or seminars ended, hearts full of gratitude for the teacher’s instruction would appear, and I remember how discussions about the mysterious power people felt were always overflowing. They were writings by people who didn’t fully understand it yet, but even just reading those posts filled my heart with passion and enthusiasm.
Looking back now, I think that internet space was truly a place where domestic Aikido practitioners could express their love for the art.
Even though they belonged to different regions and trained at different dojos, they gathered in the same space and shared the same feelings. Without anyone forcing it, they left behind reviews of their training and left comments replying to each other’s posts. Wasn’t that the power the internet held back then…
Back then, it wasn’t an era when information could be obtained as easily as it is now, and since there wasn’t much instruction available, every single notice on the homepage and every single training review was incredibly precious.
The habit of endlessly browsing the homepage out of curiosity and thirst for Aikido may well have been my very first step onto the path of Aikido.
As time passed, the era of searching for information on a computer shifted to being carried around in the palm of our hands on a smartphone. In an era when the sea of information called the internet was once dominated by specific companies or organizations, it didn’t take very long for it to become a space for individuals.
Records of experiences and learning about Aikido, once gathered in one place, began to scatter into individual blogs, and as SNS developed, photos and videos took over as the primary things to read and watch.
Compared to before, there is far more information now, but it is also true that it has become harder to find exactly the information you truly want.
We’ve entered an era where, even when you search for “Aikido,” you have to sift out the real information from among unrelated posts and advertisements.
Information has increased, but we are going through a strange era where genuine thirst is not being quenched.
https://info.aikido.or.kr — the Aikido portal site has arrived.
It is a site that gathers information about domestic Aikido.
It is a portal site that delivers information for practitioners, including Aikido news, training centers nationwide, and various reading materials.
It is a site called SEID, created so that information related to domestic Aikido can be gathered in one place.
It is also indexed on search engines like Google and Naver, making it a place where people searching for Aikido can once again meet each other through a single search page, just like in the old days. I hope that more informative posts will be added to this site going forward.
Much has faded away now, but I hope that through the Aikido portal site, we can create a lively, buzzing atmosphere just like before, and that it becomes a celebration in its own right.
