World Taekwondo to hold demonstration in Pyongyang for 1st time

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Taekwondo practitioners in action. AFP Photo

MUJU: The taekwondo demonstration team of the sport’s South Korea-led world governing body will perform for the first time in Pyongyang this fall, an official with knowledge of the matter said Friday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

The official with World Taekwondo said its demonstration team will perform during the opening ceremony of the world championships by the North Korea-led International Taekwondo Federation (ITF) in September.

“The World Taekwondo team will travel to Pyongyang from Sept 16 to 20,” the official said, noting the ITF’s championships will run from Sept 17 to 21.

The team will take the stage in the opening ceremony and will likely have another performance in Pyongyang before returning home.

The two organisations have agreed on the trip on the sidelines of the World Taekwondo Championships, which will conclude later Friday in Muju, 240 kilometres south of Seoul.

World Taekwondo, with South Korean Choue Chung-won as president, is headquartered in Seoul and is the official world governing organisation of taekwondo. The ITF, based in Vienna, is led by North Korean Ri Yong-son.

The ITF sent its demonstration team of 16 North Koreans to perform in the opening and the closing ceremonies of the competition, as per the two organisations’ cooperative agreement signed in August 2014, called the “Protocol of Accord.”

This was the ITF’s first visit to South Korea in 10 years and first to a World Taekwondo event in South Korea.

The two sides were expected to discuss a reciprocal visit by the organisation to Pyongyang.

The Koreas remain technically at war because the Korean War ended in 1953 in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

South Koreans’ trips across the tense border must be authorised by the government here and also require North Korea’s consent. – Bernama