Speaking of choi hong hi kim un yong is speaking of the foundational fracture of contemporary Taekwondo. One was a soldier, exile, and convinced nationalist; the other, a diplomat, Olympic strategist, and key figure in the International Olympic Committee. Their trajectories crossed in Seoul in the late sixties and separated with a political violence that still conditions how this art is trained, competed, and taught throughout the world. This account proposes reading them in parallel, without hagiography and without caricature, to understand what each one left behind.
01Two Origins, Two Koreas
Choi Hong Hi (최홍희) was born in 1918 in Hamgyong province, in what is now North Korea. His biography is that of a man marked by Japanese occupation: he studied calligraphy with a master who also taught him Taekkyon, was forcibly recruited by the imperial Japanese army, and served time in prison for conspiring against that same regime. After liberation in 1945, he joined the newly formed Army of the Republic of Korea, where he eventually attained the rank of major general.
Kim Un-yong (김운용), born in 1931 in Daegu, belongs to another generation and another world. His career was forged in diplomacy, intelligence services, and South Korean public administration. He spoke several languages, had studied in the United States, and moved with ease through the corridors of international power. While Choi thought in terms of national identity and military discipline, Kim thought in terms of global projection and institutional structures.
The difference is not anecdotal. It explains why one pushed Taekwondo toward a closed technical system exportable as doctrine, and the other toward an Olympic sport negotiable with federations, committees, and sponsors.
02The General Who Named the Art
Choi Hong Hi is often presented as the man who coined the term Taekwondo (태권도) at a naming meeting held on April 11, 1955. The exact authorship of the name is disputed by historians and other Kwan pioneers, but few deny that Choi was the one who imposed it administratively and defended it before the Korean martial establishment of the time.
His most recognizable technical contribution is the Tul system (ITF Patterns) and the theory of wave-like motion, known as the Sine Wave. Choi systematized 24 patterns whose names refer to figures from Korean history, from Dan-Gun to Tong-Il. The number is not casual: it represents, as he wrote, the 24 hours of a human life before eternity.
In 1966 he founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) in Seoul. But his clash with the Park Chung-hee regime, coupled with his decision to send instructors to North Korea in the seventies, led him into exile. The ITF eventually established its headquarters in Toronto and, later, in Vienna. Choi died in Pyongyang in 2002, which sealed forever the political reading of his figure in the south.
03The Strategist Who Brought Taekwondo to the Games
Kim Un-yong assumed the presidency of the Korea Taekwondo Association in 1971 and, the following year, spearheaded the creation of the Kukkiwon (국기원) as the technical headquarters and dan certification center. In 1973 he led the founding of the World Taekwondo Federation, now World Taekwondo (WT), taking advantage of the institutional vacuum left by Choi's exile and the decisive support of the South Korean government.
His legacy is less visible on the mat than in offices. Kim understood before anyone else that the path to mass adoption ran through the International Olympic Committee. He negotiated the inclusion of Taekwondo as a demonstration sport in Seoul 1988 and Barcelona 1992, and secured its entry as an official sport in Sydney 2000. He eventually became vice president of the IOC and a central figure in world sports.
The fall was hard. In 2004 he was convicted in South Korea for embezzlement and bribery, which removed him from his posts. He died in 2017 leaving a contradictory legacy: Taekwondo was Olympic thanks to him, but the federation he presided over carried considerable reputational damage.
04Two Rulesets, Two Bodies
The technical legacy of choi hong hi kim un yong is visible every weekend at any championship. The ITF maintains Tul patterns, sparring with controlled contact, and the aesthetics of the Sine Wave. The WT competes with Poomsae (품새), full-contact sparring with electronic chest protectors and an almost exclusive emphasis on high, fast, scorable kicks.
The differences are not merely sportive. They are philosophical:
- The ITF preserves a martial-military identity, with dark uniforms for black belts and closed Korean vocabulary.
- The WT adopted the white dobok with V-neck collar, simplified referee language, and a television logic designed for the Olympic viewer.
- The ITF certifies ranks through its own federative structure; the WT delegates dan certification to the Kukkiwon, which is independent of the sports federation.
A practitioner can move from one system to another, but rarely without relearning rhythm, distances, and stance. A body trained to score on electronic sensors does not move the same as a body trained to flow between tul.
Curious fact: for decades, North Korean athletes trained in ITF and South Korean athletes trained in WT did not share the mat in official competition. The first major sign of thaw came in 2018, when demonstration teams from both federations performed together in PyeongChang.
05Politics, Exile, and Geopolitics of the Mat
Reading Choi and Kim as personal rivals is tempting but incomplete. Both were pieces of a larger struggle between two Koreas that competed, among many other things, for the symbolic monopoly of the national art. When Choi traveled to Pyongyang in 1980 with a delegation of ITF instructors, he was not merely teaching kicks: he was recognizing the north as legitimate territory of his federation. This was read in Seoul as betrayal.
Kim, from the other side, converted the Kukkiwon and the WT into soft power tools of South Korean diplomacy. Each dan examination issued in Brazil, Mexico, or Spain reinforced a narrative: Seoul was the world capital of Taekwondo, not Pyongyang or Toronto. Olympic inclusion was the culmination of that strategy.
Understanding this matters because it disables the naive reading that one federation is more authentic than the other. Both are historical products, both have technical merits, and both carry political shadows.
06What Remains Today for the Practitioner?
For someone starting out, the question is not which of the two was right. It is which system better serves their goals. If they seek to compete in the Olympic Games, the path runs through the WT and the Kukkiwon. If they value continuity with the original patterns codified by the founder, the ITF offers that lineage. If what they want is self-defense or broad martial tradition, no federation exhausts the answer and it is wise to also look at independent schools.
The figure of Choi Hong Hi and Kim Un-yong remains present every time a student bows upon entering the dojang, every time a judge raises a flag, and every time a Master signs a certificate. The fracture they opened has not closed, but by knowing it one trains with greater clarity about what tradition is inherited.
The natural next step is to review in detail the WT Poomsae system and ITF Tul in parallel, to see how two readings of the same movement produce two distinct arts.