page_title: Taekwondo
section_title: 1972: Kukki-style / WT-Taekwondo
hierarchical_section_title: Taekwondo / Styles and organizations / 1972: Kukki-style / WT-Taekwondo
caption_attribution_description: English: Comparison of relative popularity of Kukkiwon-style taekwondo around the world
context_page_description: Taekwondo, Tae Kwon Do or Taekwon-Do is a Korean martial art, characterized by its emphasis on head-height kicks, jumping spinning kicks, and fast kicking techniques with kicks and striking being above waist height only.
  Like Tang Soo Do, Taekwondo always requires wearing an obi. It is a combative sport and was developed during the 1940s and 1950s by Korean martial artists with experience in martial arts such as karate, Chinese martial arts, and indigenous Korean martial arts traditions such as Taekkyon, Subak, and Gwonbeop. The oldest governing body for Taekwondo is the Korea Taekwondo Association, formed in 1959 through a collaborative effort by representatives from the nine original kwans, or martial arts schools, in Korea. The main international organisational bodies for Taekwondo today are the International Taekwon-Do Federation, founded by Choi Hong Hi in 1966, and the partnership of the Kukkiwon and World Taekwondo, 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. The governing body for Taekwondo in the Olympics and Paralympics is World Taekwondo.
context_section_description: In 1972 the Korea Taekwondo Association (KTA) Central Dojang opened in Seoul; in 1973 the name was changed to Kukkiwon. Under the sponsorship of the South Korean government's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism the Kukkiwon became the new national academy for Taekwondo, thereby establishing a new "unified" style of Taekwondo. In 1973 the KTA established the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF, now called World Taekwondo, WT) to promote the sportive side of Kukki-Taekwondo. The International Olympic Committee recognized the WT and Taekwondo sparring in 1980. For this reason, the Kukkiwon-defined style of Taekwondo is sometimes referred to as Sport-style Taekwondo, Olympic-style Taekwondo, or WT-style Taekwondo, but the style itself is defined by the Kukkiwon, not by the WT, and the WT competition ruleset itself only allows the use of a very small number of the total number of techniques included in the style. Therefore, the correct term for the South Korean government sponsored style of Taekwondo associated with the Kukkiwon, is Kukki Taekwondo, meaning "national Taekwondo" in Korean.
  The color belts range from white to junior black belt (half black, half red) or plain red. The order and colours used may vary between schools, but a common order is white, yellow, green, blue, red, black. However, other variations with a higher number of colours is also commonly seen. A usual practice, when employing only four coloured belts, is to stay at each belt color for the duration of two gup ranks, making a total of eight gup ranks between white belt and 1st. dan black belt. In order to make a visual difference between the first and second gup rank of given belt color, a stripe in the same color as the next belt color is added to the second cup rank in some schools. 
  In Kukki-style Taekwondo, the word used for "forms" is poomsae. In 1967 the KTA established a new set of forms called the Palgwae poomsae, named after the eight trigrams of the I Ching. In 1971 however (after additional kwans had joined the KTA), the KTA and Kukkiwon adopted a new set of color-belt forms instead, called the Taegeuk poomsae. Black belt forms are called yudanja poomsae. While ITF-style forms refer to key elements of Korean history, Kukki-style forms refer instead to elements of sino-Korean philosophy such as the I Ching and the taegeuk.
  WT-sanctioned tournaments allow any person, regardless of school affiliation or martial arts style, to compete in WT events as long as he or she is a member of the WT Member National Association in his or her nation; this allows essentially anyone to compete in WT-sanctioned competitions.
caption: Relative popularity of Kukkiwon-style Taekwondo around the world
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