The founder of Kyokushinkai karate, Masutatsu Oyama, was born in 1923 near Seoul in South Korea.
He studied Chinese kempo at 9 years of age. He went to Japan in the age of 12 years old to live and enrolled at university. After mastering judo, he followed Gichin Funakoshi himself. Making such rapid progress at 24 years old he was 4th dan.
Deciding that he wanted to devote the rest of his life to spreading the knowledge of karate, he spent the next year living in the mountains, subjecting himself to the physical rigours of martial arts training day and night and study of the classical Budo literature. In 1951 he returned back and started his own training hall in Tokyo.