The origin of Taekwondo could be traced back to South Korea two thousand years ago. Two main styles are found in Taekwondo: Kukkiwon, which is developed from World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), has higher popularity and is recognized in the Olympic Games. Sparring, a system derived from Kukkiwon, is a combat which requires players to use strategies to defeat the opponent. This is what athletes use to compete in Olympic Games. The less popular style comes from International Taekwondo Federation (ITF). WTF and ITF follow different standards, yet they share the similarity in their ranking system.
The ranking in Taekwondo is divided into two stages, junior and senior. Junior is divided into ten “geups” (junior levels in Korean). Beginners start at Geup 10 and move backwards. Most of the time, Taekwondo schools use color belts to identify the geups. When you pass Geup 1, you move onto the senior stage, which is the black belt. In addition, the senior stage is divided into nine “dans” (senior levels in Korean). You move upwards from the first Dan to the ninth Dan. The Dan level is often indicated with the number of strips on the black belt.
Generally, it takes 52 years to achieve the highest Dan in Taekwondo. Juniors need to prepare for at least two months until they can participate in the exam. The exams for juniors are held in the Taekwondo Schools (or their local Taekwondo schools). The master will judge the students’ skill to determine if they are able to move to a higher level. For seniors, the interval to take the test from the first Dan to the second Dan is one year. The interval increases one year progressively. For instance, from the second Dan to the third Dan needs two years to prepare. However, seniors need to be 22 years old before they are qualified to participate in the third Dan exam. This explains why there are seldom ninth Dan masters in the world.
In the 2008 Olympics, the Taekwondo representative from Cuba, Ángel Matos kicked the referee in the head during the competition. He was angry at the referee for disqualifying him because he was taking longer than one minute when he got injured to recover. The consequences for Ángel Matos’ act was that Taekwondo was up for debate either it was an appropriate sport for the Olympic Games.
Therefore the most shocking event that led the doom of being eliminated from the Olympics to Taekwondo was something that Herb Perez, the team leader of USA was furious about the poor judging that happened to Steven Lopez, one of the athletes on his team. He spilled out the shocking news. In June, WTF asked the team heads to sign an agreement to not to file any protest that would lead Taekwondo to get kicked out of the Olympics.
The news spread out and everyone couldn’t help wondering whether Taekwondo should be eliminated from the Olympics or not. Another reason was that cheating was really easy in Taekwondo because the rules were not specific enough and it was up to the judges to determine if they wanted to give points to the athlete’s kick.
Although Taekwondo is still in for the 2012 Olympics but it is still on the edge of getting kicked out. The WTF has been trying to fix the rules to avoid this problem. The most significant change is that they have changed the protecting gear to electronic protecting gear. Electronic protecting gear has devices built inside which will determine if the kick is worth points or not. Thus it will be more fair and less arguments.
Taekwondo is an extremely popular sport in Taiwan. There are several reasons for this. Tracing back to the twenty century, when Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with many solders and people, he also brought Taekwondo into Taiwan hoping it would be useful when in a war. The other reason is that Taekwondo is originated from Korea; since the two countries are only around seven thousand miles away from each other, it was easily spread to Taiwan. The biggest reason and is that in 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the Taekwondo representative, Chen Yi-an had won first place. To Taiwan, it was a national wide glory. For the impact was more and more Taekwondo schools were open; in addition, Taekwondo became the most popular martial arts in Taiwan.
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