Michael O’Malley correcting a student’s guard mid-class on the floor of his Peabody school.

Boston, Massachusetts  ·  Taekwondo since 1973

MasterMichael J.
O’Malley

Four-time U.S. National Champion. Captain of the U.S. team. Principal instructor at the Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute for over thirty-five years. He built a school in Peabody and, in 2025, sold it — intact. He now takes a small number of consulting engagements with the people running the next generation of martial arts schools.

Email Michael → See the record

On the floor — M.J. O’Malley Tae Kwon Do Center, Peabody

1973black belt at 16 1984U.S. team coach 2011opens Peabody 2025sells the school
50+years training, competing and teaching Taekwondo
4×U.S. National Champion, welterweight (1978–1981)
35+years as principal instructor, Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute
14years owner-operator, M.J. O’Malley Tae Kwon Do Center

On the record

“I was very fortunate to learn Tae Kwon Do under the tutelage of the Jae Hun Kim Tae Kwon Do school in Boston. Mr. Kim and Mr. Michael O’Malley — a multiple-time national champion — emphasized a lot of heavy bag work and power in their training program. Because of that, their students learned damaging power kicks rather than point-scoring techniques.”

Joe Rogan — comedian, UFC commentator, and a competitive Taekwondo black belt out of Boston. Posted publicly to his own page.

The record

Fifty years, in order

1973Black belt at sixteen — tested before General Choi Hong Hi, the founder of Taekwon-Do — and already teaching on Jae Hun Kim’s floor.He had found Grandmaster Jae Hun Kim, then a graduate student at MIT, a couple of years earlier, as Kim was introducing authentic Taekwondo to New England.
1976–82Five consecutive years on the USA Taekwondo national team.
1978Bronze medal, Pan American Games, Mexico City.
1978–81Gold at the U.S. Team Trials four years running, welterweight division.
1979Named Male Competitor of the Year. Competes at the World Championships in Stuttgart.
1980Gold medal, Pan American Games, Houston. Elected U.S. Team Captain. Receives the Ken Min Leadership Award.
1984Head coach of the U.S. national team at the Olympic Sports Festival, Houston.Four years before Taekwondo’s Olympic debut in Seoul.
1985Elected Athletes’ Representative to the United States Olympic Committee.
1980s–2010sPrincipal instructor at the Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute for more than thirty-five years.Where he taught, among thousands of others, a young Joe Rogan.
2017Taekwondo Lifetime Achievement Award, and induction into the Taekwondo Hall of Fame, at the ceremony in New York.
2011Opens the M.J. O’Malley Tae Kwon Do Center, 79 Lynnfield Street, Peabody.Seven days a week, forty-plus classes.
2025Sells the school as a going concern — students, staff and floor intact — and stays on Sundays to walk one last group of candidates through their black belt tests.
Black belts of the M.J. O’Malley Tae Kwon Do Center lined up beside a Taekwondo Hall of Fame banner in Peabody, marking Michael O’Malley’s 2017 induction.
Back in Peabody after the induction — marking it with his own black belts, beneath the tenets.

Press  ·  1998

“It literally touched my heart”

Clipping from the Boston Sunday Herald, 3 May 1998, page B21, featuring Michael O’Malley teaching at the Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute.
Boston Sunday Herald, 3 May 1998, p. B21.
Staff photos by Michael Seamans.

“Learning how to take care of yourself was especially helpful in my neighbourhood when I was growing up. But tae kwon do — loose translation from Korean, ‘the way of hands and feet’ — literally touched my heart and changed my life.”

“Self-defence is certainly a primary goal. But so is overall fitness and a sense of discipline. And self-esteem is also becoming important, especially among the girls and younger kids.” Michael O’Malley, aged 40 — Boston Sunday Herald, May 1998

Michael O’Malley on the floor with a children’s class at the Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute in Boston, beneath the school’s Korean banner.
The same floor the article describes — the Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute, Boston.

Lineage

Who came through the room

Fifty years of teaching produces a long list. A few of the names people recognise — and a great many they don’t.

Boston, 1980s

Joe Rogan

Trained at the Jae Hun Kim Institute through his competitive years and has credited Michael by name for the power-kicking philosophy he still teaches today.

Boston, before the films

Donnie Yen

The Hong Kong star of Ip Man, Rogue One and John Wick 4 learned Taekwondo from Michael during a short spell in Boston, years before the movies. His mother, Bow-Sim Mark, is herself a renowned wushu master who taught in the city.

1978–1990s

U.S. national team athletes

Competitors he cornered, coached and selected across the pre-Olympic era of American Taekwondo, including at the 1984 Olympic Sports Festival.

1975–2025

Several hundred black belts

Boston, Cambridge and Peabody. Kids who arrived at seven and tested for black at fifteen. Adults who started at fifty. Instructors now running their own floors.

Work with Michael

Two ways to start

Most martial arts schools are not sold. They are closed — quietly, at the end of a lease, with the students scattered. Michael spent fourteen years building one and handed it over whole. That, plus fifty years on the floor, is what he has to offer someone standing where he stood.

Offering 01  /  Start here

The Instructor’s Hour

One hour, one-to-one, by video. For school owners, head instructors and competition coaches. Bring one real problem.

  • Curriculum and belt standards that hold their meaning as you grow
  • Retention past the point where most students quit
  • Developing instructors who can run the floor without you in the room
  • Building a sparring program that produces competitors without driving off the recreational students who pay the rent
  • A short intake beforehand, so the hour isn’t spent getting up to speed — bring a notebook and it’s yours to use
$30060 minutes
Offering 02  /  Advisory

Exit Ready

A ninety-day engagement for an owner preparing to hand off a school — to a buyer, a partner, or a senior student.

  • Three ninety-minute working sessions, plus email between them
  • What a buyer is actually valuing, and what to clean up in the twelve months before you list
  • Moving students and instructors through a change of ownership without a churn cliff
  • What the founder does on the other side — the part nobody plans for
$3,50090 days

Also available: keynotes and panels · podcast and press interviews on competition, longevity, and building something that outlasts you. Ask about either →

Michael is not running group classes or clinics at present. A small number of private, one-to-one instruction engagements will open later in 2026.

How it works

An email, not a funnel

STEP 01

Write to him

A few lines is plenty: what you run, what’s stuck, what you’ve already tried. Michael reads every message himself and will tell you honestly whether he’s the right person for it.

STEP 02

A short intake

Half a page before the session — enrolment, staff, curriculum, what you’ve tried — so the hour isn’t spent getting up to speed.

STEP 03

The work

An hour of direct answers from someone who has run the floor seven days a week. Come with your questions, take your own notes, and use what’s useful.

The long version

Tools, not techniques

Students of every rank assembled beneath the M.J. O’Malley Tae Kwon Do Center crest in Peabody, with Michael O’Malley at the centre.
The Peabody school. Forty-plus classes a week, seven days, for fourteen years.

Michael J. O’Malley grew up in Roxbury and Dorchester, in a Boston that had very little to offer a kid without money. In the early 1970s he found a Korean master named Jae Hun Kim — then a graduate student at MIT — who was in the process of introducing authentic Taekwondo to New England. Michael was fourteen. He trained ten and twelve hours a day.

By sixteen he had a black belt — tested in front of General Choi Hong Hi, the founder of Taekwon-Do — and was already teaching. By the middle of the decade he was on the national team, and for five straight years he did not leave it: four national titles, two Pan American medals, world championships in Germany and Korea, team captain at twenty-two, head coach of the U.S. squad at twenty-six — four years before Taekwondo was an Olympic sport at all.

Then he taught. For over thirty-five years he was the principal instructor at the Jae Hun Kim Taekwon-Do Institute in Boston. In 2011 he opened his own floor in Peabody and ran it seven days a week, forty-plus classes, for fourteen years. In 2025 he sold it to owners who kept it open, and stayed on Sundays until his last group of candidates had their black belts.

Ask him what he actually taught in all that time and he does not talk about kicking:

“Learning techniques like kicking and punching is one thing, but those are really just tools.”

What he was building was confidence, and the judgement to not need it. That is the thing he is still interested in, and it is why the consulting exists: there are a few hundred people in this country trying to run a school the way he ran his, and almost nobody they can call.

Get in touch

Start with an email.

Tell Michael what you are running, what is stuck, and what you have already tried. He reads everything himself and answers personally.

[email protected] →

Availability. Michael is taking a limited number of engagements at the moment and his schedule through September is very full. Messages are still welcome — replies may take a little longer this month, and new engagements are being booked from October.