Taekwondo GTF competition and federation management

Taekwondo (; Korean: 태권도; [t̪ʰɛ.k͈wʌ̹n.d̪o] ) is a Korean martial art and combat sport involving primarily kicking techniques and punching. "Taekwondo" can be translated as tae ("strike with foot"), kwon ("strike with hand"), and do ("the art or way").

Depending on the style, Hyeong, Poomsae or Teul are patterns that demonstrate a range of kicking, punching and blocking techniques, gyeokpa is the art of breaking wooden boards and in the combat sport kyorugi involves the kind of sparring seen in the Olympics. Taekwondo is primarily a bare-hand martial art and does not include weapons such as swords or nunchucks (nunchaku). Taekwondo practitioners wear a uniform known as a dobok.

Taekwondo is originally a martial art which was developed during the 1940s and 1950s by Korean martial artists with experience in martial arts such as karate and Chinese martial arts. In the early 1970s, a new style of Taekwondo was developed to promote it as a competitive sport, alongside its traditional martial arts form.

The oldest governing body for taekwondo is the Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA), formed in 1959 through a collaborative effort by representatives from the nine original kwans, or martial arts schools, in Korea. The main international organizational bodies for taekwondo today are various branches of the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF), originally founded by Choi Hong-hi in 1966, and the partnership of the Kukkiwon and World Taekwondo (WT, formerly World Taekwondo Federation or WTF), founded in 1972 and 1973 respectively by the Korea Taekwondo Association. Kyorugi ([kjʌɾuɡi]), a type of full-contact sparring, has been an Olympic event since 2000. In 2018, the South Korean government officially designated taekwondo as Korea's national martial art. At the Olympic and Paralympic level, taekwondo is governed by World Taekwondo.

Beginning in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II and the Japanese occupation, new martial arts schools called kwans opened in Seoul. These schools were established by Korean martial artists with backgrounds in Japanese and Chinese martial arts.

Early progenitors of taekwondo—the founders of the nine original kwans—who were able to study in Japan were exposed to Japanese martial arts, including karate, judo, and kendo, while others were exposed to the martial arts of China and Manchuria.

Discussions around the historical influences of taekwondo have been controversial, with two main schools of thought: traditionalism and revisionism. Traditionalism holds that the origins of taekwondo are indigenous while revisionism, the prevailing theory, argues that taekwondo is rooted in karate. In later years, the Korean government has been a significant supporter of traditionalist views as to divorce taekwondo from its link to Japan and give Korea a "legitimate cultural past".

In 1952, South Korean president Syngman Rhee witnessed a martial arts demonstration by South Korean Army officers Choi Hong-hi and Nam Tae-hi from the 29th Infantry Division. He misrecognized the technique on display as taekkyon, and urged martial arts to be introduced to the army under a single system. Beginning in 1955 the leaders of the kwans began discussing in earnest the possibility of creating a unified Korean martial art. Until then, "Tang Soo Do" was the term used for Korean karate, using the Korean hanja pronunciation of the Japanese kanji 唐手道. The name "Tae Soo Do" (跆手道) was also used to describe a unified style Korean martial arts. This name consists of the hanja 跆 tae "to stomp, trample", 手 su "hand" and 道 do "way, discipline".

Choi Hong-hi advocated the use of the name "Tae Kwon Do", replacing su "hand" with 拳 kwon (Revised Romanization: gwon; McCune–Reischauer: kwŏn) "fist", the term also used for "martial arts" in Chinese (pinyin quán). The name was also the closest to the pronunciation of "taekkyon", The new name was initially slow to catch on among the leaders of the kwans. During this time taekwondo was also adopted for use by the South Korean military, which increased its popularity among civilian martial arts schools.

In 1959, the Korea Tae Soo Do Association (later Korea Taekwondo Association or KTA) was established to facilitate the unification of Korean martial arts. Choi wanted all the other member kwans of the KTA to adopt his own Chang Hon-style of taekwondo, as a unified style. This was, however, met with resistance as the other kwans instead wanted a unified style to be created based on inputs from all the kwans, to serve as a way to bring on the heritage and characteristics of all of the styles, not just the style of a single kwan. As a response to this, along with political disagreements about teaching taekwondo in North Korea and unifying the whole Korean Peninsula, Choi broke with the (South Korea) KTA in 1966, in order to establish the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF)— a separate governing body devoted to institutionalizing his Chang Hon-style of taekwondo in Canada.

Initially, the South Korean president gave Choi's ITF limited support, due to their personal relationship. However, Choi and the government later split on the issue of whether to accept North Korean influence on the martial art. In 1972, South Korea withdrew its support for the ITF. The ITF continued to function as an independent federation, then headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Choi continued to develop the ITF-style, notably with the 1983 publication of his Encyclopedia of Taekwon-Do. After his retirement, the ITF split in 2001 and then again in 2002 to create three separate ITF federations, each of which continues to operate today under the same name.

In 1972, the KTA and the South Korean government's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism established the Kukkiwon as the new national academy for taekwondo. Kukkiwon now serves many of the functions previously served by the KTA, in terms of defining a government-sponsored unified style of taekwondo. In 1973 the KTA and Kukkiwon s