By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter

Taekwondo, Korea’s national-representative sport, was confirmed as an official competitive event for the 2012 London Summer Olympics at the 117th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Singapore, Friday.

Despite anxiety over its future, the sport met the standard for remaining an official Olympic program by winning a majority in a secret ballot, which dealt with each of the 28 individual Olympic sports. Softball and baseball were dropped from list, but detailed voting results were not announced.

Taekwondo will stay in the Olympic program until the next program-deciding ballot for the 2016 Games. The martial art, which originated in Korea, has been included in the Olympic program since the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Currently some 60 million people around the world practice it. The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), the sport’s governing body, has 179 national associations in its global membership.

“We are very content with the result and we thank all the Korean people and taekwondo lovers from all over the world for all the support they offered,” said Kim Jung-kil, president of the Korea Sports Council. “Taekwondo is the only sport we have spread worldwide and the ballot meant a lot to us because it was a matter of national pride.

“We should not be complacent now that taekwondo is in the Olympic program. We must ceaselessly make efforts to reform the sport so that it can become a globally-favored sport,” he added.

The South Korean delegation, led by Kim, has been lobbying for the survival of taekwondo at the world’s biggest sports festival. Kim had met with IOC president Jacques Rogge prior to the session opening, where he handed the Belgian a message from South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, calling for retaining taekwondo as an official Olympic sport.

Taekwondo has been suffering from a whirling sense of danger due to the possibility of losing ground in the wake of the fall of Kim Un-yong, former IOC vice-president and head of the WTF.

The sports tycoon had to resign from all of his posts after being arrested in January last year on charges of embezzling 3.84 billion won ($3,657,000) in funds of the WTF and the World Taekwondo Headquarters from 2000, and receiving 810 million won ($771,400) from sporting goods suppliers in exchange for influence-peddling.

However, the WTF was quick to respond to the crisis. It established a reform program late last year, and introduced some revised rules such as a two-minute three-round system, a sudden death rule in an extra round, and an increase of judges from three to four in this year’s World Championships.

hckim@koreatimes.co.kr