A lot has been said, written about Taekwon-Do (Taekwon-Do as defined as Chang-Hon/Traditional) in regards to being part of the Olympic Games and other sporting agencies such as SportAccord, CISM, etc.
The question shouldn’t be “why Taekwon-Do should be in the Olympics or other international venues” but rather it should be “why does it!”
Taekwon-Do (in all it’s forms) has always been a politically charged martial art. More so then many others, and no martial art is without a political “arm.” There are what I call two “world” Taekwon-Do’s that have now been around since 1973. These two organizations, the International Taekwon-Do Federation® aka ITF and the World Taekwondo Federation® aka WTF. Much has been written about these two organizations, but the simple fact is that the WTF was created to compete against the ITF and they have won a good majority of their battles.
The fact that they are nearly identical in terminology is the least of the similarities “World” versus “International” and being the early 1970’s communications were not instant like they are now. In fact, within about 30 seconds of hitting the approve button on my dashboard, this article will be able to be viewed by millions but in the 1970s, it took weeks for an article to travel from the western hemisphere to the eastern hemisphere and sometimes longer. A telephone call took several minuets and then the information had to be relied by word of mouth. These issues are in fact, one of (several) the reasons why the WTF was able to gain a following by in part just telling others that the ITF was no longer around. The WTF had the full backing of it’s home government, and the ITF just had the backing of it’s senior leaders.
The WTF from the start had a mission of sporting Taekwondo, while the ITF was more centered around self defense (its true roots, much like Karate), and historical preservation. The sporting aspect in Taekwon-Do (and martial arts) has it’s usefullness. It’s a great way to showcase some skills, but, the question we as instructors should ask ourselves, is that worth it?
Competition is healthy, if used and promoted correctly it can instill values such as sportsmanship, working as a team, self worth, pride etc. However, it also has some not so great effects as well. Some claim that competition also serves as a mechanism for determining the best-suited group; politically, economically and ecologically. Competitive sporting events also are great way to economically improve (sometimes not) a group, organization or even country. Every nation works very hard to bring the Olympic Games to their own country because it generates many hundreds of millions of dollars or more that span over many years prior and even after, the 1988 Seoul Games is a prime example, as South Korea had gained alot from the games, and the buildup to them!
The recent ITF World Championships held in Pyongyang is another example of why a country would host an event. In this case, North Koreans earning about $15.00 per month with a National earning of about $40 million (96 out of 193 according to the CIA WORLD FACT BOOK) a comparison to understand these figures is South Korean was listed as number 12 with $1,459,000, the USA as listed number 1 at $14,660,000 with the whole of the European Union slightly beating out the USA with $14,820,000 GDP (PPP), the DPRK (North Korea) gave a good show with the 17th ITF World Championships, in order, in part to gain International funds for a very cash strapped country.
So, sport Taekwon-Do….is it really needed? Well, it does give a venue for people to compete in an individual activity (tuls, hyung, poomse aka Patterns/Forms), and breaking, team with team patterns, and then we have sparring. A poll conducted via this website several years ago, asked how many in a school competed at a National or International level, the mean average was less then 2% per club competed as that level with just under 10% at the local and state/regional levels.
Taekwon-Do should in my opinion have a sporting aspect, this is just a great avenue to have those that wish to compete can, and should, but, it should not be used as a money making venture, like so many peoples/organizations try to do. One of the goals in Taekwon-Do is to serve man-kind, so, after all “bills” are paid, maybe Taekwon-Do should use the profits (if there are any) to be donated to non profit research to cure anything, something. Greed seems to be the biggest factor to host some of these competitions, and greed has destroyed more men, and organizations then nearly anything in the history of mankind!
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