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Taekwondo as it’s known today got its start in Korea following the country’s occupation by Japan when Korean martial arts masters wished to create a martial art outside of Japanese influence. The resulting combat style was based on a Korean traditional military martial art called Taekkyeon and a mixture of other martial arts from China, Manchuria and even Japan. The influences of the style stretch back over more than 2,000 years! However, the modern technique was developed among masters at Korean martial arts schools (called kwans) and the name taekwondo – meaning ‘the way of the foot and the fist’ – was accepted in 1955 with nine kwan being known as the founders of the martial art.

In 1960 the sport made its debut worldwide when the original masters went to various countries to spread the style. Eventually an international federation was founded. The World Taekwondo Federation, the one that runs to this day was founded in 1966 and is based in South Korea.  The sport made its Olympic debut as a demonstration event appropriately in Seoul at the 1988 Games and became an official medal event in 2000, one of only two martial arts in the Olympic programme, the other being judo.  Today the sport boasts over 60 million practitioners from across 184 countries.

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The gates to Kukkiwon, the World Taekwondo Academy headquarters
Wikimedia Commons