Yong Chin Pak has been teaching martial arts at Iowa State for the last 35 years. In 2009, he plans to take on a new task – running for Ames mayor.

“I told my students at our martial arts banquet that I am planning on running to be the mayor of Ames in 2009,” Pak said.

Pak, adjunct instructor of kinesiology, said he wants to be mayor so he can help bring students and the city closer together.

“There is a wonderful resource at Iowa State, and I would like very much to bring it closer to the city,” he said.

Pak has been teaching at Iowa State since 1973. He holds eighth-degree black belts in tae kwon do and judo and a sixth-degree belt in hapkido, a Korean self-defense art.

The decision to run for city office has not come to Pak lightly. He said he has spent the better part of a decade thinking about the decision, looking at what the mayor has done for the city each year. He has found that students play a critical role in the city’s financial well-being.

“It’s not just a dollar or two that the students bring into the city,” he said.

Pak doesn’t have a party affiliation or any major running issues yet.

“When the time gets closer, I will know more,” he said. “I don’t want to make any enemies early on.”

The students and instructors who work with Pak nearly every day are supportive, but some students were caught off-guard by the announcement.

“I was surprised at first,” said Audra Mills, ISU Judo Club president and senior in biology. “He’s a really busy man with martial arts, but I think he can do it.”

Pak joked that his decision to run for office might cause confusion as to what title his students should use to address him.

“They asked if they should call me ‘mayor’ or ‘master,'” he said.

Kenwood Scoggin, assistant instructor for the Judo Club and physical science technician for the National Swine Research Institute, has known Pak for 16 years and thinks he can handle the moral and administrative requirements of the job.

“He was the president of the Tae-Kwon Do Federation, which is a national-level group. He was also part of the Olympic Committee, and that takes great organizational powers,” he said. “He’s a great delegator – he finds people’s strengths easily.”

Dan Knosby, instructor for the Tae Kwon Do Club, recalls one experience that shows how widespread Pak’s influence is.

“I was in the University of California at Davis, and I was trying to buy a uniform. They asked who I trained under, and I said ‘Yong Chin Pak,'” he said. “Immediately after that, they asked if I could come in and teach that week. This is all the way out in California, and they know of him.”

The one thing his students and friends don’t know is whether or not he will give up teaching to focus on being a mayor.

“There’s been talk of retirement for a few years now,” Knosby said. “I’m actually a little surprised he would slow down in martial arts.”

Mills has heard the same rumors, but can’t attribute a source to them.

“We don’t know whether it is due to this run for mayor, or whether it is because of his age,” she said. “They’re just rumors.”