The Art of
Shim Gum Do

1944 — Early Life

A Childhood Marked by War

Chang Sik Kim was born on January 8, 1944, in a small farming village in Korea. He was born during a difficult period in Korean history, as Korea was nearing the end of Japanese occupation and would soon face the devastation of the Korean War.

Growing up during these turbulent years shaped many aspects of his early life. His path into martial arts came later, when one of his teachers introduced the idea to him. At that point, martial arts was not something he had previously considered, but that introduction would eventually lead him toward a lifelong journey of training and discipline.

Age 13 — 1957

Meeting His Teacher

Master Kim's path changed forever at the age of thirteen, when he met Zen Master Seung Sahn Lee, who would later found the Kwan Um School of Zen and become one of the most influential Korean Zen teachers to bring Buddhism to the West. Seung Sahn Lee told the young Kim that he had a "martial art face," and posed him a koan that would define the rest of his life:

A great Zen sword master saw the reflection of the moon in a pool of water. He drew his sword and cut the reflection in half, and the two halves separated. How is this possible?

Seung Sahn Lee told him that if he wanted to find the answer — and attain true martial art enlightenment — he would have to come live at the temple and follow the training himself. Knowledge handed down by someone else, he said, would never truly belong to him; it had to be earned directly through his own practice and realization.

Kim accepted, entering Hwa Gye Sa temple in Seoul in 1957 under Seung Sahn Lee's tutelage. Life at the temple was not built around formal lectures on doctrine. Instead, the Dharma was taught through the rhythms of daily monastic life — cleaning, cooking, and the disciplined repetition of practice. Even mundane chores carried meaning: sweeping the floors and preparing meals became lessons in clearing the mind, using resources carefully, and wasting nothing, whether food, energy, or attention. For years, Kim lived and trained this way, carrying with him the unanswered koan and the seed of a promise that he would one day attain martial art enlightenment.

1965 — Age 21

The Hundred-Day Retreat

By 1965, at the age of twenty-one, Kim had trained under Seung Sahn Lee for eight years. It was then that his teacher sent him to Sam Gak Mountain near Seoul for an intensive

Conditions on the retreat were austere, and the practice was relentless. Day after day, Kim sat with the koan of the sword master and the moon's reflection, pursuing not an intellectual answer but a direct, lived understanding. Then, over the course of the retreat, something broke open. Kim attained what practitioners of Shim Gum Do call Mind Sword Enlightenment — and with it came something far more than the answer to a single koan. In that state, the entire art of Shim Gum Do was revealed to him: not invented or designed in the ordinary sense, but perceived whole, as though it had always existed and simply needed to be seen.