Three-foot trophies, plaques and awards from personal and team events surround the walls in the cluttered office. Grabbing a bottle of water from a miniature refrigerator, Grand Master Yong Chin Pak smiles — the water is his lunch.

For 30 years, Pak has instructed martial arts and physical education at Iowa State. Pak has taught nearly 28,000 students within the university and almost 100,000 students outside the university.

To Pak, teaching martial arts means more than kicks and punches. As a child in Korea, he survived poverty and sickness by learning martial arts.

“Many youngsters died.” Pak said. “I was lucky to be a survivor at that time.”

Pak was born June 7, 1948, in Seoul, Korea, three years after the country received its independence from Japan.

He said the entire country had no finances or food and everyone felt “insecure.”

“I remember being cold and starving,” Pak said. “Not just me, but the entire country.”

The Korean War ended in 1953 and Pak recalled an event that would later shape his path in life. He said schools, churches and roads were being built and he wondered, as a 5-year-old, who constructed the buildings.

“One day I asked my mother why these people helped our country,” he said. “She didn’t know, but would say ‘because of the Yankee.'”

When Pak reached seventh grade, he began learning martial arts as a way to become physically stronger.

“My health was bad,” Pak said. “After a couple of months of martial arts it improved.”

That year Pak began learning English and asked the teacher, “What is a Yankee?”

“The teacher said it was America and showed geographically were it’s located,” he said. “At that point, I knew that someday I wanted to go there.”

In high school, Pak had a scholarship in martial arts that paid tuition. His school competed against other schools in Tae Kwon Do.

“You had to be in the top five at school to have a scholarship,” he said.

After high school graduation, Pak worked for the Korean military as a secret service agent and later graduated from Yongin Judo College in Korea.

In 1973, Pak arrived at Iowa State and began teaching physical education, Hapkido, Tae Kwon Do and Judo.

“It was really cold and there was a lot of snow,” he said. “Everything was new to me.”

Now, Pak is president of both the State of Iowa Taekwondo Association and the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association. He has coached five National Tae Kwon Do Championship teams at Iowa State.

Case Everett, senior in biochemistry, has four years of experience in Tae Kwon Do at Iowa State and said Pak has made a difference in his life.

“He’s impacted my life by speaking of issues that we students don’t have time to think about in college,” Everett said.

Pak said the stereotype for martial arts is entertainment but martial arts are “equal to life.”

“A student can be just an average person,” Pak said. “But after learning martial arts, they have good citizenship and become responsible, self-controlled and indomitable.”

Pak is a sixth-degree black belt in both Judo and Hapkido. He has a seventh-degree black belt in Taekwondo, which is considered Grand Master level.

Everett said a number of Pak’s students with black belts teach throughout the Midwest. Pak still keeps in contact with some of these students.

“Part of my real reward is hearing from people that I taught in the past,” Pak said.

After years of teaching martial arts, Pak said he is happy with his life but still has an objective for Iowa State.

“I won’t think I’m successful until Iowa State has a scholarship for martial arts,” he said.