Going Global

Taekwondo is now taught in far more places than it was founded in. This chapter reads how the sources tell that story: the instructors and school chains that carried it abroad, the long road from a national sport to the Olympic programme, and the question of how many people actually practise it. That last question turns out to be a useful lesson in itself, because the articles I read give membership figures for federations but no count of practitioners.

Carrying It Abroad: Instructors and School Chains

The Taekwondo article says that "some of the nine original kwans during this period were brought to United States and other countries". Its styles section then describes three overseas strands. All three are the article's accounts, and none is verified elsewhere in my reading.

Three things stand out. The overseas spread started under the older kwan-based schools, before the Kukkiwon and the WTF existed. Several of the early overseas leaders formed their own organisations and styles, not branches of one global body. And the sources attribute the spread to named instructors, with the credit assigned by the organisation telling the story (the ITF credits Choi; Jhoon Rhee's article calls him the father of American taekwondo). Nothing I read gives a country-by-country account, so this chapter does not claim to describe how it spread in Europe, Latin America, Africa or Asia beyond Korea. Those are gaps.

The Olympic Path

The Taekwondo at the Summer Olympics article says the effort "began in 1974 in the United States when taekwondo was admitted into the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU)", whose role is "to establish standards for various sports nationwide". The article says the WTF's technical standards were adopted by the AAU taekwondo group. Its later steps:

The Olympic format as the article gives it: single-elimination brackets by weight category, with a repechage for the bronze medals, and medals "in four different weight classes for both men and women". Until the 2012 Games a national Olympic committee could send "a maximum of two men and two women competitors"; "this restriction has been lifted for the 2016 Summer Olympics", so each may now qualify one athlete per weight category. The Taekwondo article adds that since 2000 taekwondo has been one of "three Asian martial arts (the others being judo and karate)" among the sports in the Olympic Games, that it entered the Commonwealth Games in 2010, and that the Paralympics recognition came in 2013 (Chapter 4). Only sparring is contested at the Olympics; poomsae is not an Olympic event.

Numbers: What the Sources Do and Do Not Say

The figures I found are about institutions and events, not individual practitioners:

• The World Taekwondo article: "as of May 2023 there are 213 member nations".
• The Kukkiwon article: the first World Taekwondo Championships in May 1973 had "200 athletes from 17 countries"; the Kukkiwon has run an annual "World Taekwondo Hanmadang" since 1992.
• The WT article lists continental unions: the European (1976), Asian (1976), Pan American (1978) and African (1979) inaugural meetings, and Oceania recognised as the fifth only in July 2005.
• The Olympics article: a "number of athletes by nation" table (not reproduced here).

What is missing is any total of people who practise taekwondo, or any count of schools. Popular sources often give a figure in the tens of millions. I did not find one in the three articles I searched, and I do not repeat a number from memory, because I cannot name who counted. It is a fair example of a claim worth checking: a membership list of national associations (213) is not a count of practitioners, and a figure of "practitioners" could mean current students, anyone who has ever held a belt, or people registered with a federation. Before using any such figure, ask who counted, in what year, and what counted as a practitioner.

Government Recognition at Home

One thing the sources do say about Korea's own position: "in 2018, the South Korean government officially designated taekwondo as Korea's national martial art". The Kukkiwon article adds that "since 2010, the Kukkiwon has been officially recognized as a sports organization and operates under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism". These are consistent with Chapter 1's table. The Kukkiwon's own permanent demonstration team, established in 1974, is a further example of the state's role in promoting the art abroad, though the article does not say where the team has performed.

Reading Rules From This Chapter

1. "Father of" is a title with an owner. Several countries and organisations name their own founder. Treat the title as the owner's claim.
2. Membership is not participation. A count of national associations says how widely a federation is organised, not how many people train.
3. Follow the road, not the date. The Olympic path is a chain of recognitions (national governing body, international sports body, multi-sport games, IOC). Different articles date each link differently.
4. Silence is a result. No practitioner total in the sources read is itself a finding. Do not fill it with a remembered number.

Exercises

Next chapter: Taekkyeon and Other Korean Arts, which looks at taekkyeon's present-day practice and heritage listing, hapkido and other Korean arts, and how the sources separate the older from the newer.