
The North Korean National Tae Kwon Do Demonstration Team, on a 5-city good will tour, made a smashing impression—including board-breaking and brick-crushing—upon a near capacity crowd of 1,600 at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on October 10. Woo Jin Jung, a Korean-American who now lives in Cedar Rapids, was one of the organizers of the tour. Jung, 65, owns the New Life Fitness Center in Cedar Rapids and has trained approximately 4,600 black belts. He took a delegation of martial artists to North Korea in May 2006. "I want to show the (North Koreans that the United States) is not missiles all over, not tanks all over,’’ said Jung "The Midwest, it’s beautiful here … I want to show the real U.S., not the political U.S." Cedar Rapids was the only secondary market on the tour, which also included stops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Louisville and Atlanta. The Paramount Theatre is one of three facilities in Cedar Rapids managed by VenuWorks.