Taekwondo - online puzzles

Taekwondo or Tae Kwon Do (Korean 태권도/跆拳道 [tʰɛ.k͈wʌn.do] (listen), English pronunciation, or ) is a Korean martial art, characterized by its emphasis on head -height kicks, jumping and spinning kicks, and fast kicking techniques.

Taekwondo 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 (KTA), 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 (ITF), founded by Choi Hong Hi in 1966, and the partnership of the Kukkiwon and World Taekwondo (WT, formerly WTF), founded in 1972 and 1973 respectively by the Korea Taekwondo Association. Gyeorugi ([kjʌɾuɡi]), 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.

History

Beginning in 1945, shortly after the end of World War II and Japanese Occupation, new martial arts schools called kwans opened in Seoul. These schools were established by Korean martial artists with backgrounds in (mostly) Japanese and Chinese martial arts. At the time, indigeneous disciplines (such as Taekkyon) were all but forgotten, due to years of decline and repression by the colonial government. The umbrella term traditional Taekwondo typically refers to the martial arts practiced by the kwans during the 1940s and 1950s, though in reality the term "Taekwondo" had not yet been coined at that time, and indeed each Kwan (martial art school ) was practicing its own unique style of martial art.