The Founder of the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) Choi Hong Hi: An Exploration of Fiction and Fact

Abstract

Although Choi Hong Hi was the principal inventor of the name ‘taekwondo’, he is often confused with, or misrepresented to be, the actual founder of taekwondo. As a result of his break with the South Korean taekwondo community in 1965, he founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF), which became the archnemesis of the 1973 established World Taekwondo Federation (WTF). Subsequently, the struggle over worldwide taekwondo supremacy by these organizations accelerated greatly after Choi introduced his style of taekwondo to North Korea in 1980. In the course of the ITF’s global expansion, Choi and his followers created and propagated an idolized and glorified image of him, which is still resonating today. Thus, a reassessment of Choi’s image is long overdue. In reality, Choi’s martial art skills were very rudimentary, and he was not highly regarded by the much more experienced other leaders of the early Korean martial arts community. Numerous accounts about Choi are full of misinformation, propaganda, and outright falsehoods; partly, because Choi often exaggerated or bluntly falsified his martial arts record and personal history. Yet, his alliance with the brutal North Korean regime should be considered his greatest failure, and for this reason, history is unlikely to be kind to him.