Jhoon Goo Rhee was born in Asan, Korea on January 7, 1932. He started studying martial arts after they became legal in 1945. He had just started his university studies when the Korean War began in 1950. He spent two months hiding from the North Korean army in a cellar before working for the United States Air Force as an interpreter and then serving in the South Korean army. After a truce was declared in 1953, he studied aircraft maintenance before moving to the United States in 1958. He studied engineering at the University of Texas, Austin before dropping out to teach martial arts in Washington D. C. in 1962.
He was a grandmaster of taekwondo and became an ambassador for the sport. In the 1980s, he ran 11 studios in the Washington area and trained instructors to teach his style of taekwondo nationwide. He developed and manufactured pads to reduce injuries and created martial-arts ballets. He provided free taekwondo instruction to members of Congress from 1965 until 2010. He also taught many celebrity clients including Chuck Norris and Muhammad Ali. He wrote a book about his friendship with Bruce Lee entitled Bruce Lee and I. He died from complications of postherpetic neuralgia on April 30, 2018 at the age of 86.
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