By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) is speeding up its ongoing reform drive as part of efforts to maintain the Korean martial art as an Olympic sport. The sport’s fate will be determined early next month at the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s 117th Session in Singapore.

The federation will hold an ad-hoc committee to review the introduction of electronic protectors on July 20 in Seoul. Several international companies, such as LsJust of Korea, ATM of Austria and Globility-Management of Germany, will participate in demonstrations of their products designed to help ensure objectiveness and fairness in taekwondo competitions.

``We aim to apply the new scoring system using electronic sensors to the taekwondo competition at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,’’ WTF President Choue Chung-won told The Korea Times on Thursday.

The IOC will conduct an unprecedented secret vote on July 8 in Singapore to decide the fate of 28 sports. If a sport does not obtain more than 50 percent of the votes from 117 members, it will lose its spot in the Olympics from the 2012 games, and five other sports _ golf, karate, roller sports, seven-man rugby and squash _ will compete to be their replacements.

In an evaluation report on all 28 Olympic sports released Monday, the IOC stressed that it is essential for the WTF to ``ensure that the scoring system is well understood by the public and both the selection and impartiality of referees are unquestionable.’’ Presently, judges visually determine whether a contestant’s kick has stuck the opponent.

In a bid to improve the credibility of the judging system, the WTF has decided to increase the number of judges from three to four starting in this year’s World Taekwondo Championships.

Hoping to make the sport more interesting and action-packed, the WTF introduced three two-minute rounds from the previous three minutes at the 2005 World Taekwondo Championships in Madrid, Spain. An extra ``sudden death round,’’ in which the first player to score a point wins the match, is used in the case of a draw in regulation, unlike the old system of using a judge’s decision.

Taekwondo became an official Olympic sport at the 2000 Sydney Games. It is already confirmed for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Currently, eight taekwondo events are included in the Olympic games, four each for men and women.

Taekwondo has a worldwide following of about 60 million practitioners and its world governing body, the WTF, has a global membership of 179 national associations. ``Taekwondo’s other educational and humanitarian values are recognized and accepted around the world,’’ according to Choue.

In a recent evaluation report, the IOC said about 99 percent of taekwondo tickets were sold at the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympic Games, ranking third in ticket sales among the 28 Olympic sports.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr