All Star Tae Kwon Do

Great TKD school. Great masters at this school, they care! It has been a great experience for my son. He has vast improvement in motor skills and most of all attitude improvement.

I saw this place and masters, they are really good teacher than other places master, i was so impressed about them. I visited a lot of tae kwon do places, but this place is best of best place. The atmosphere liked the family impressed favorably really.

My daughter is now a red belt and today she is testing for jr black belt. I cannot tell you how proud we are of her. The best thing they teach the kids is self confidence and respect for themselves and others.
Mariah is a strong confident young lady and will use this throughout the rest of her life.
Thank you Master Hong and jenny

This place is a very welcoming and fun place. I took a 1 month class here where i learned the basics (went up to green belt when i was a kid and forgot most of it). It welcomes all types of people and isn’t ethnic to koreans only. The greet each other and do warm ups in english, korean, and chinese when i was there. Everyone is very helpful and friendly.
This would be a great place to learn tae kwon do, wish i had the time to take classes.
Not for people who moved and are looking for a new place to learn, the forms may be different from other places, I remember vaguely a purple belt form that we were learning in white belt.

We love this place. Master Hong, by far, is the best teacher we have met. We have tried all the Taekwondo studios in the area and they don’t even come close to the quality of care and service they offer at All Star. Master Hong genuinely cares for each individual student. His discipline is firm, consistent, and kind. His level of respect for each child is very admirable. It’s like family here. I want my boys to grow up here under the tutelage of the teachers here.

Friendly staff and students. Everyone and every age is welcome. From 4 year old beginners to 40+ year old die hards. This is an excellent environment to learn proper snappy poomse, basic self-​defense, sparring and get healthy all at the same time.

If I need to sum up my experience in one word, that word would be «disappointing.» This is a lengthy review because I think it’s a huge investment in terms of time and money (~$ 1000 a year), so I want others to learn from my experience.
A little background: I used to do competitive TKD in college and was also one of the instructors for our team, so I know what it takes in terms of technique and teaching. I expect my son to be good at TKD and I hope that one day he can compete at a high level. So my expectation is likely higher than the average people, so take my comment with a grain of salt if you’re not that serious about TKD and just want a babysitting service with a splash of TKD.
First, the good stuff… the location is very convenient for anyone living in Diamond Bar. Master Hong is very friendly and nice, and I think he himself is very good at TKD. Mrs. Hong is great, always very nice and helpful. The school set-​up is very typical, padded mat throughout the school with wide open space. I was impressed by the fact that Master Hong teaches TKD himself. He was the main instructor almost all the time, which is a huge contrast to other schools where the master sits in his office and let the assistants teach. From knowing these things, we signed up for 1 year.
My son attended for a year and I did not see a year’s worth of improvement. When my son first started, I thought he had a lot of potential (I used to teach, so hopefully I would know). But after a year of training, I saw very little of that potential left. His kicks are not based on good technique. After class, he always want to show some fancy kicks he learned but not with good form. I’m always thinking, «why are you being taught these fancy kicks if the basic kicks are not perfect?» By this stage (blue belt), I would expect excellent form and technique with all basic kicks but unfortunately I don’t see it. I end up teaching him the proper techniques, sometimes even as simple as a stance, and can see huge improvement. Why am I paying money if I have to teaching him myself?
I figured out the best way to evaluate TKD school is to check out their belt tests. You can see how good the students are, their kicks, their discipline (if they’re sitting upright and paying attention), and their forms. At this school, it seems like all the kids just go through the motion. It’s almost as if they’re just there to get a belt, not really doing TKD nor do they care. This reflects poorly on the master, allowing anybody to take tests. Some students perform so poorly at the test that I wonder why the parents /​master let them embarrass themselves in front of others.
Now, equally important to techniques in TKD, I expected my son to learn discipline and respect for others. That is also a major issue I had with this school. I don’t think Master Hong really disciplines the kids. Sure, he gets pissed if things really get out of hand but I often see the children horseplay while in class, standing or sitting by the wall… half the kids don’t follow directions. Master Hong wants the kids to have fun and release their stress (he said so during one of the tests), but I seriously think the kids are having way too much fun. TKD, respect, discipline should be priority, but this school places fun over all those and I think that’s unfair to the parents and the students who take it seriously. If I want my kid to have fun, we can go to a park for free. If I want my kid to have a blackbelt without actually having the skills to back it up, I’d buy one from eBay.
This is from my experience and things may have changed at this school. I really do hope that they have changed because I see Master Hong with a lot of potential. Check out their belt test and see how the kids do.