Although some state that Taekwon-Do is thousands of years old, an ancient martial art, this is not true. It is actually a fairly recent creation, but it is its origins that go back hundreds of years.
In the early 7th century, the Hwa-Rang Youth Group was a group of warriors that trained in Taekkyon, Korean foot-fighting. They were the actual driving force in unifying the three kingdoms of Korea. Their martial arts skills are legendary; they were said to be able to jump over a tall man or a six-foot-wall with no running start in a flying side kick, and their feet were so fast that enemies would commonly mistake their kicks for sword blows. Whether this is just a legend or if it based in fact, the Hwa-Rang Warriors were amazing. It is their Taekkyon that General Choi Hong-Hi, born on November 9th, 1918, combined with Japanese Shotokan Karate, a martial art he learned while in Japan for school, to create Taekwon-Do. His goal was to create the most effective, greatest martial art of all time. He improved techniques from Karate and Taekkyon, and added in new techniques all his own, and what he created became an entirely different, new martial art. On April 11th, 1955, General Choi Hong-Hi founded Taekwon-Do, the Korean martial art which means, “the way of the hands and the feet.”
This was the ITF style Taekwon-Do, and General Choi spread it throughout the world, traveling with his demonstration team to many different countries. Then the WTF was later created, a sport Taekwondo that became different from the ITF. Now, there are many, many organizations (see ORGANIZATIONS page) that teach many styles of Taekwon-Do.
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