Korean martial art finds home in Akron's Nepali community at Sunshine Taekwondo Academy

From the outside, it doesn't look like there's room for a martial arts studio. But beyond the entrance to Sunshine Taekwondo Academy, a couple dozen children in spotless white uniforms stretch, practice punches, kicks and other maneuvers in unison in the big, brightly lit gym − referred to as a "dojang" in Korean.

The Korean terms are part of training for the first-generation children of immigrants from Nepal, where their instructor first learned the Korean martial art. She started practicing at age 8 in 1994 at a refugee camp located in the far southeast of the country. Though ethnically Nepalese, the refugee community's mostly farming families had lived in Bhutan for many years until they were forced to leave for Nepal in the early 1990s.

Kaushila K. Karmacharya, 39, is now a fourth-degree black belt with about 60 students enrolled at her Brittain Road studio. Around twice that many members of the Nepali/Bhutanese community are enrolled at her school in Reynoldsburg, outside Columbus.

"I started taekwondo when I was in fifth grade with my brother's and family's support," she said. "Despite the poverty of our extended family of 11 members, I did not give up the martial arts and continuously won medals to make my family proud."

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Earlier this month, she took 30 students from Akron to a tournament hosted by Himalayan Taekwondo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The team earned 20 gold medals, 19 silver medals, and 10 bronze medals in sparring and "poomse," the Korean term for choreographed sequences of punching, kicking and blocking techniques.

The tournament, which drew students from schools in several states, was organized by a fellow refugee who runs schools in Harrisburg and Kentucky.

'Tireless' drive to succeed

Master Kaushila, as her students call her, said practicing taekwondo was not easy, as the male-dominated culture both among her people and in the sport posed problems.

"I was not supported or accepted by the community due to the patriarchal society and taekwondo being a male-dominated sport/game. The road I traveled was not easy," she said. "I did not give up. I was determined and not bothered by criticism."

She earned her first-degree black belt in 2001 and eventually was granted asylum in the United States in 2008, where she set up a taekwondo school in Arizona. She married a non-refugee Nepali citizen and had two children before joining Akron's growing immigrant community in 2017. Both she and her husband are now naturalized U.S. citizens.

She opened Sunshine Taekwondo Academy in 2019, only to close for nine moths after the coronavirus pandemic struck. It reopened in March 2021, and she started another branch in Reynoldsburg in January. Now, she spends four days teaching in Akron and three days down south.

"I won many medals and awards as a winner," she said. "I am a tireless leader. I made dozens of students blackbelts and still working on it."

Korean martial art goes world wide

Korean Gen. Choi Hong Hi is recognized as the founder of taekwondo. According to his 2002 obituary in the New York Times, Choi developed the art in the 1940s and '50s as a method of unarmed combat combining traditional Korean techniques and Japanese karate. A founding general in the Korean Army, he eventually trained instructors in the discipline for the entire South Korean army, came up with the name for the new art in 1955, and founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation in 1966.

The South Korean government established the rival World Taekwondo Federation (now World Taekwondo) in 1973, after a disagreement on whether taekwondo should be taught in North Korea. World Taekwondo is a member of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations and taekwondo has been an Olympic sport since 1988, its debut as a demonstration sport. It has been a full medal sport in every summer Olympic games since the 2000 games in Sydney, Australia.

Sunshine Taekwondo is affiliated with World Taekwondo.

Nearly 40 years of taekwondo in Nepal

Although the practice of martial arts was banned at the time, a 1983 demonstration by a group of Nepalese taekwondo practitioners led to the government's authorizing the discipline for police and government agencies, followed by the general public the next year, according to the Nepal Taekwondo Association.

Eventually, it ended up in the refugee camps, where students practiced on soccer fields, said Master Nakul Sharma, of Himalayan Taekwondo. He remembers training with young Master Kaushila in the camp in the 1990s.

Karmacharya, a fourth-degree black belt, now outranks him. Sharma said he arrived at the refugee camp a couple years before her, so he outranked her then. Born in West Bengal India, Sharma moved with his family to Bhutan at age 2 in 1983, then left for Nepal as a refugee in 1992.

He earned his first-degree black belt in 2000 and started teaching other refugees.

"I saw that our little ones and grown-up children had low self-esteem, suffered from lack of self-control and didn’t believe in themselves," he said. "I knew that the art of taekwondo had the ability to fuel both physical and mental growth on young children and adults. I wanted to bring some social change in their and our thinking. This made me take my passion and establish taekwondo schools in two different refugee camps in Nepal."

He was promoted to second-degree black belt in 2007 and settled in Pennsylvania in 2013.

Preserving culture through martial arts

On a recent day, parents gathered in a waiting room and on the sidelines at Sunshine Taekwondo Academy as their children practice. They say the fact that the other families with students are Nepalese is important.

Rup Dhungana, father of a 6- and 8-year-old, said the training is a good way for them to associate with others in the community who share the same native language. But more importantly, he said, are the lessons they learn.

"When they're at home, they spend most of their time watching television," he said. "This is organized. They come in here and learn how to follow rules and regulations. They learn discipline."

Nandy Subedi, who has a 7-year-old girl in the school, said she sees many positive benefits for her daughter, both cognitive and physical.

"I'm hoping that she achieves health and wellness. I want her to have a good health and fitness routine," she said, adding the training should also help her do well in school.

And as her daughter grows into a young woman, "I want her to know self-defense skills," she said.

Dhungana and Subedi acknowledge their children will eventually assimilate with American culture as they get older.

But in the meantime, "They have to preserve their culture," Dhungana said. "We have to know who we are before we can explore other cultures."

Sunshine Taekwondo Academy is at 1717 Brittain Road in Akron, and at 1302 Brice Road in Reynoldsburg. It can be reached at 602-245-3403, or sunshinetkdacademy@gmail.com. The school also offers music and dance lessons.

Eric Marotta can be reached at 330-541-9433, or emarotta@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarottaEric

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Sunshine Taekwondo Academy brings light to Nepali community in Akron