Korean domination in TKD

[P.A.L]

i was looking into some history of the games

http://www.wtf.org/site/hall/winners.htm

Korean only lost their championship twice once in 2000 world cup to

Iran and Frace

1-IR 2-FR 3-KOR

and once in last olympics to Taiwan( but remember each chosen country only had two players in olympic)

1-Tiwan 2-Korea 3-Iran

it's amazing that they managed to keep the distance, there is even a big gap in number of medals with recent runers up like USA and IRAN. i guess it's just like Russians and wrestling in 70's and 80's.

[foofies]

sparring with a korean is a night-mare for me.

[isshinryu5toforever]

Taekwondo in Korea has been going through some major changes in the last decade or so. I just had this discussion with a man who's been doing Taekwondo for 20 something years, and has been a major international player. In the last decade Korea has seen a small decay in the ability of their competitors. Around the time of the Seoul Olympics, they decided if they wanted it to be a widely loved international sport AND a sport in the olympics they would have to quit dominating every single weight class in every single competition. So, the TKD became a little easier, they seem to have "lost a step" over the past decade. This isn't to say they aren't still top international players, but they have lost a little bit of the fire that they once had. I was told this has a lot to do with the turnover to a moneymaking venture from a true martial art. Eventually, they will start losing more world championships, and maybe that will light a fire under someone.

[Kill Jill]

sparring with a korean is a night-mare for me

Try training a little harder...

[aefibird]

sparring with a korean is a night-mare for me.

Not all Korean's are great. Some are outstanding, but some are mediocre and others just downright bad. There's been a couple of international WTF events near where I live recently and I entered them. Some of the competitors from the Korean team seemed to just not care, which puzzled me, as they'd flown half way around the world to have a bad attitude and a poor performance in a small town in England. Others were good, but there were a lot that weren't.

[foofies]

Correct me if im wrong, but when Dan testing you should write an essay about takewondo, combo, techniques or a kick and how it can be devolved. Those paper corrected in Korea. If they find something interesting they might give it to there national team .

[complete]

Because TKD was added to the Olympic Games in 2000 for the first time, the Olympic committee put a limit on number of entree for Korean athletes (something like 4 out of 8? weight classes for both man/woman)

Otherwise, they would've won more medals.