Taekwondo

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Taekwondo (; ; ) is a Korean martial art and combat sport involving punching and kicking techniques. The word Taekwondo can be translated as ''tae'' ("strike with foot"), ''kwon'' ("strike with hand"), and ''do'' ("the art or way"). In addition to its five tenets of courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit, the sport requires three physical skills: ''poomsae'' (품새), ''kyorugi'' (겨루) and ''gyeokpa'' (격파).

Poomsae are patterns that demonstrate a range of kicking, punching and blocking techniques, kyorugi involves the kind of sparring seen in the Olympics, and gyeokpa is the art of breaking wooden boards. Taekwondo also sometimes involves the use of weapons such as swords and nun-chucks. Taekwondo practitioners wear a uniform known as a .

It is a combat sport which was developed during the 1940s and 1950s by Korean martial artists with experience in martial arts such as karate and Chinese martial arts.

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 , or martial arts schools, in Korea. The main international organisational 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. Gyeorugi (), 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.

The governing body for taekwondo in the Olympics and Paralympics is World Taekwondo. Provided by Wikipedia