On Monday "Grandmaster" Woojin Jung spoke the Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids at our Noon meeting ...

Here's a recap from Ripples from the Rapids for this week ...

Grandmaster Woojin Jung was the program on Monday, March 8Th and we welecomed two new members to our Club. We will have Club Breakouts April 19, which gets back to the original Rotary International meeting in Chicago.

THE FRONT PAGE

GRANDMASTER WOOJIN JUNG

Why He Chose to Live in Cedar Rapids for the Last 39 years?

Woojin Jung arrived in Cedar Rapids on December 31, 1971. He was to stay with a Korean friend who was then living in Cedar Rapids. However, there was no one to greet him at the airport because his plane had been delayed by a snowstorm. His English was poor. He was alone in a strange, new land and had difficulty using the telephone to call his friend. Upon his arrival in the United States from Korea, Jung had only $35 in his pocket.

His first job was pumping gas in a gas station on 15Th Street and Mount Vernon Road SE. He ate one meal a day. On Friday’s he treated himself to a wonderful meal at the KFC restaurant for 99-cents. By Wednesday he would be "abuzz with excitement" and by Friday "delirious" with anticipation. The meal revived his "body and soul" and he is sure he will never taste anything better that the KFC Friday lunch meal for the rest of his life.

In 1973, he opened his first Tae Kwon Do School at that same location on Mount Vernon Road SE. In 1979, he built New Life Fitness World in Cedar Rapids. It was the first health club owned and operated by an immigrant in Cedar Rapids and the biggest the city had ever seen. He went on to build 13 more health clubs including facilities in Iowa City, Columbia and Lexington, South Carolina and Fort Meyers, Florida.

Very grateful for his success, he wanted to give back and in the late 1970s, he started forming foundations and charities to help others. He said his inspiration came from the community of Cedar Rapids. He formed Jung’s Black Belt Association, a school scholarship for children in his hometown in Korea, the Grandmasters’ Honor Society and the Jung Family Foundation.
Don Canney, former Mayor of Cedar Rapids, fought in the Korean War. He remembered Koreans as good people and he and Woojin became close friends. Cedar Rapids and Wulsan, Woojin’s hometown, became sister cities. Jack Evans, who introduced Woojin at Rotary this week, has visited Woojin’s home in Wulsan. Jack and Woojin sat on the floor and drank tea with Woojin’s mother. In 1989 Woojin assisted in bringing PMX to Cedar Rapids. This amounted to a $500 million investment and 600 jobs for the community.

In 2007 he sponsored the Goodwill Tour which hosted the North Korean Tae Kwon Do Demonstration Team on a tour of the United States. The team performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cedar Rapids, Louisville and Atlanta. This had been a dream of Mr. Jung for which he’d worked the prior 16 years to create. This was the first tour of its kind and brought citizens of North Korea and the United States together with no political agenda. In 2008, on a similar cultural exchange, the New York Philharmonic played the U.S. national anthem in North Korea for the first time.

Today, 39 years after his arrival in Cedar Rapids, Woojin Jung is known as one of the most successful Tae Kwon Do masters in the United States. He runs seven fitness clubs and owns several shopping malls. He operates a 36-acre Tae Kwon Do training site in the Rocky Mountains and is the publisher of the TaeKwonDo Times Magazine.

Woojin graciously furnished complementary copies of his book Eastern Spirit, Western Dreams to Rotarians present at the meeting. I read my autographed copy over the weekend. It is an absolutely delightful read.

Our Next Meeting:

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010
THE CROWNE PLAZA HOTEL
MARCIA ROGERS
CEDAR RAPIDS FOOD INDUSTRY'S ASSISTANCE TO HAITI
We ask that you arrive arrive in sufficient time to be seated by 12:15 p.m.

UPCOMING Rotary Club Of Cedar Rapids PROGRAMS & EVENTS

• March 22, 2010 - Brian Connors - Experiences Living and Starting a Small Business in Beijing.
• March 29, 2010 - Travis Christopher, Hawkeye Area Boy Scouts of America.
• April 5, 2010 - Rich Patterson, Director, Indian Creek Nature Center.
• April 12, 2010 - Sean McMahon, Executive Director of the Iowa Chapter of the Nature Conservancy.
• April 19, 2010 - Breakout Meetings at Member Businesses.
• April 26, 2010 - Shannon Ramsay, President, Trees Forever.
• May 3, 2010 - Kirk Ferentz, Head Football Coach, The University of Iowa.
• May 10, 2010 - Robert Massey, Executive Director, Orchestra Iowa.
• May 17, 2010 - Joe Jennison, Executive Director, Iowa Cultural Corridor Alliance.
• May 24, 2010 - Charles Swanson, Executive Director, Hancher Auditorium.
• May 31, 2010 - NO ROTARY IN OBSERVANCE OF MEMORIAL DAY.
• June 7, 2010 - John Bloomhall, President, Diamond V Mills.
• June 14, 2010 - Elwynn Taylor, Professor of Climatology, Iowa State University.
• June 21, 2010 - Chris Coleman, President, Better Business Bureau.
• June 28, 2009 - Passing the Gavel and Community Service & Appreciation Awards.

Robin Tucker is a third generation member of the Rotary Club of Cedar Rapids.