Fighting Adversity:Taiwan's Taekwondo Community Looks to Innovate

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday evening, a time when many young people are battling it out in online fighting games. Bai Shang-ren is fighting too, but he's doing it in the real world with his own hands and feet.

Bai lifts his right foot to make a feint, drawing his opponent forward. When the latter kicks at Bai with his right foot and misses, Bai corkscrews and leaps into the air, both feet striking his opponent's protective gear within a half second of one another. Bai is 178 centimeters tall, and strong. His kicks stagger his opponent, forcing the latter to step back to regain his balance.

The setting for this scene is a tae-kwondo studio located near the Shi-pai Station of the Tai-pei Metro. There are about 20 people of varying ages in the studio, both students and instructors, all wearing taekwondo uniforms. The youngest is a first grader in the beginner's blue-red belt, but there are many black belts as well.

Sparring is an important element of tae-kwondo training. Once instructors finish explaining a technique, students practice it with one another, then begin to spar. Students are first matched with others of similar size and build. At more advanced levels, trainers sometime make them face off against opponents very different from themselves, e.g. women versus men, low-level students versus advanced students, or students versus instructors. They may even assign a specific instructor to spar with a student to work on particular weaknesses.

Competitors wear electronic scoring gear to ensure the fairness of matches. Competitions are also recorded from start to finish so that when disputes arise, critical moments can be reviewed in slow motion.

"Shang-ren has a number of strengths," says Chen Wei-xiong. "In addition to being tall and powerful, he's eager to fight and very even--keeled, both very important psychological traits." Chen, who heads the studio, is well pleased with his student.

Just 16 years old, Shang-ren has already won a national championship in his age group. A student at Wan-fang High School since 2010, he has continued to train at Chen's studio every day even though the school offers martial arts classes.

Asian martial arts, including tae-kwondo, have long focused on developing practitioners' character. Children who come to the studio receive both mental and physical training, making tae-kwondo somewhat different from most extracurricular activities. That's important to parents. But it's talent and desire that ultimately determine which students continue to pursue the art. As they compete and move up through the ranks, tae-kwondo becomes intimately connected to their academic and work choices.

Chen is very familiar with the process. It's been more than 30 years since he opened his first studio in Tai-pei's Bei-tou District in 1977. Neighborhood parents think very highly of Chen, not least for how his focus on group learning and etiquette has helped shape his remarkable daughter.

Taekwondo is fiercely competitive. Competitors have similar builds, and weight classifications are strictly enforced. (left) Su Li-wen, a coach and former Chinese Taipei athlete, watches intently from outside the ring as her students battle for a spot on the national team.

Chen Wei-xiong brought his daughters into his studio at an early age, and put all three through grueling training. "If we were impolite, failed to offer respect after class, mumbled responses, didn't sweat enough, or didn't train hard enough, Dad made us do push-ups and brought out the stick," recalls Chen Shih-hsin, who won a gold medal in tae-kwondo at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Including his daughters, 20-some of Chen Wei-xiong's more than 1,000 students have gone on to represent Taiwan in international competitions.

The Chen family has been involved in the tae-kwondo system at virtually every level, as students, studio trainers, school teachers, national athletes, national coaches, and even as executive director of the Chinese-Taipei Tae-kwondo Association (CTTA), and all of them earn their livings from it.

Tae-kwondo, basketball, and baseball are Taiwan's most popular sporting pastimes. But tae-kwondo, unlike the other two, requires little space and minimal equipment. Moreover, it embodies Asian cultural values, suits Asian body types, and can be studied almost anywhere in Taiwan. In fact, the CTTA estimates that Taiwan had some 1,031 active studios in 2010.

Students of taekwondo must learn the forms at an early age if they are to do well in competition. In the photo above, a young student trains in the studio of gold-medal coach Chen Wei--xiong, father of Chen Shih-hsin. At left, Chen Wei-xiong spars with Bai Shang-ren, a rising young star.

Taiwan's tae-kwondo system is structured a bit like a pyramid, with the large numbers of children learning the sport providing the foundation for its development and the studios functioning as its promoter.

But when the sport was first getting its start in Taiwan, it had a distinctly official character.

In Korea, where tae-kwondo originated, tae means to kick, kwon to punch, and do a method or school. Martial arts like tae-kwondo have been used throughout Korean history to train soldiers in hand-to-hand combat techniques.

After World War 2, many of the Korean martial arts experts who had fled abroad during the war returned home with new techniques from the countries in which they'd taken refuge. Korea formed the Tae Soo Do Association in 1961 to promote the martial arts. A few years later, that organization changed its name to the Tae-kwondo Association. Korea then placed the sport under the auspices of the Korean Sports Council, and began using it in the military.

When Chiang Ching-kuo visited Korea in 1966 during his tenure as defense minister, the Korean military arranged for him to see soldiers undergoing tae-kwondo training. Impressed, Chiang decided to introduce the sport, which stressed manners, justice, obedience and patience, to Taiwan. He chose to do so via the division of the military most likely to engage in hand-to-hand fighting: the marines.

Acknowledging the widespread "recover the mainland" mentality of Taiwan in the martial-law era, tae-kwondo was introduced as the "recover the mainland" style of martial art.

"In the 1970s, Chiang brought Korean military instructors to Taiwan to teach tae-kwondo," recalls Wang Zheng-xiong, a former national coach. "These soldiers became seed instructors here." Wang says that he, like many other senior tae-kwondo coaches, first learned from a retired military trainer.

Tae-kwondo quickly spread to the police as well. In 1987 Luo Chang, a former soldier who headed the National Police Agency and the CTTA, made tae-kwondo a part of ongoing police training. With tens of thousands of soldiers and police practicing the sport, it soon put down deep roots in Taiwan.

Yang Shu-chun, who has chosen to continue competing in spite of her unfair treatment at last year's Asian Games, is focusing on preparations for the 2012 Olympics. In the photo, Yang takes a vow on behalf of participants in a contest to select the national team.

The Korean and ROC governments threw their weight behind tae-kwondo when they did because both faced serious external threats and the times were suffused with the notion of using martial means to save the nation.

But tae-kwondo hasn't just benefited from official support. The sport also happens to be easy to get into and enjoyable to watch.

Modern competitive bouts are fast-paced and quickly decided: each consists of only three rounds of three minutes each. Kicks are the primary scoring mechanism, and offer a tremendous variety of potential attacks. That variety makes tae-kwondo much more dynamic than boxing.

The World Tae-kwondo Federation was founded in 1973. It held its first world championships and began promoting taekwondo as an international sport later the same year. Tae-kwondo was incorporated into the Asian Games in 1986. It became a demonstration sport at the Olympics in 1988, when Seoul hosted the summer games, and a medal event in 2000, when Sydney hosted them.

Taiwan, which had previously been uncompetitive in international sports, made tae-kwondo a focus when the sport became a medal event. Chen Yi-an won Taiwan's first Olympic gold medal in a demonstration event in 1988. Taiwan's first gold in a formal medal event was also in tae-kwondo at the 2004 summer games in Athens.

Taekwondo is fiercely competitive. Competitors have similar builds, and weight classifications are strictly enforced. (left) Su Li-wen, a coach and former Chinese Taipei athlete, watches intently from outside the ring as her students battle for a spot on the national team.

In fact, Taiwan's best international performance to date in tae-kwondo came at the Athens games, where Chen Shih-hsin and Chu Mu-yan won gold and Huang Chih-hsiung silver.

But the Chinese Taipei team was less successful at the 2008 Bei-jing Olympics, earning just two bronze medals. "The consistently strong Koreans have been Chinese Tai-pei's greatest rival," says Chou Kuei-ming, coach of the 2008 team. He argues that dropping a few medals may not be the best standard for judging our athletes, adding that "the 2008 Chinese team was incredibly improved from 2004 and certainly unsettled the Chinese Tai-pei team."

"Our tae-kwondo is built on techniques imported from Korea," says Wang. "But our two nations have vied fiercely with one another in international competitions." Wang says that given Korea's leading role in the global development of tae-kwondo and the fact that there's some subjectivity in scoring matches, it's not surprising that the -Chinese Taipei team often seems to get the short end of the stick.

Fighting sports are prone to conflict and disputation. Taiwan's Cheng Ta-wei was an assistant judge when Chinese Tai-pei athlete Tseng Ching-hsiang was dropped by an illegal punch from his Korean opponent at the 2009 East Asian Games. When Cheng awarded points to the Korean athlete, the match's chief judge, a mainland Chinese official, called the match for Tseng's opponent. The resulting dispute was broadcast on local TV and infuriated Taiwanese. The public demanded sanctions against Cheng, and the CTTA subsequently suspended him. But the conflict raged for a full six months.

In Taekwondo matches, kicks must strike to score. Electronic sensors on the footgear help judges determine which kicks have landed. In the photo, competitors battle for a spot on the national team at Minghsin University of Science and Technology.

Then, just as the outrage over the Cheng affair was settling, another incident occurred, this time involving Yang Shu-chun.

Yang was competing in the first -women's 49-kilogram match of the November 2010 Asian Games in Guang-zhou. Ahead of her opponent, Vietnam's Thi Hau Vu, 9-0 in the first round, Yang was disqualified by an ethnically Korean Filipino judge for using illegal equipment.

People have long been critical of the room for subjectivity in the judging of tae-kwondo matches. Electronic devices were introduced in recent years in an effort to improve judging standards and assist officials in making fair determinations. The Yang dispute centered on one of these devices: the electronic socks that competitors wear. The socks have large sensors that detect when they strike a sufficiently large area of the opponent's protective gear with sufficient force. When the sensors register such a blow, they send a signal and a scoreboard at the side of the mat registers a point.

A new type of electronic sock was introduced at last year's Asian Games. When Yang's socks were judged to be in violation, she was disqualified from the match and barred from competing in the losers' bracket. The announcement, which caused Yang to break down in tears on the mat, reignited Taiwan's Korea complex.

"It's our fault that Yang Shu-chun wore the wrong socks," says a tae-kwondo coach. "But disqualifying her and barring her from competing in -later matches was excessive." The coach says what's truly unfortunate is that Taiwan's emotional protest to the Executive Council of the Asian Tae-kwondo Union has probably made Taiwan look like a troublemaker, which may work against us in future international competitions.

In Taekwondo matches, kicks must strike to score. Electronic sensors on the footgear help judges determine which kicks have landed. In the photo, competitors battle for a spot on the national team at Minghsin University of Science and Technology.

Looking at the matter in less heated hindsight, both disputes ended up involving the international community. "Even the Sports Affairs Council is concerned that if the unfair judging we've seen at a couple of international competitions continues, we'll find it more difficult to participate in future events," says Chou.

Taiwan's tae-kwondo community is concerned about increasingly fierce international competition, even though it has demonstrated that it has the capability to bring home Olympic gold.

"China and Korea are employing completely different development models," says Wang Zheng-xiong. He explains that a 2004 visit to Shaanxi to coach the province's tae-kwondo team allowed him to observe the development of tae-kwondo in China at close hand. "China's model involves national guidance," he says. "Korea's no longer does. Instead it has corporate-sponsored teams that face off against one another."

"In Taiwan, most athletes-except the very few who have the talent to represent the nation-give up serious pursuit of the sport once they start university," says Chou. "Corporate support in Korea and governmental pressure in China allow young athletes to continue to pursue the art into full adulthood. That's necessary if you're going to remain competitive on a national level."

"Looking back, every time tae-kwondo has been knocked to the mat, it's gotten up again," says Wang. He notes that Taiwan won two golds and three golds, respectively, in the demonstration events at the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics. After failing to win even one gold in Sydney in 2000, we reorganized our system and turned in a great performance in 2004.

In the wake of the recent controversies and the loss of some of our international competitiveness, reforms are again in the works. Chen Chien-ping, the current CTTA executive director, has already stated that he will not run for reelection in the upcoming election, making new blood at the top a certainty. Having weathered defeat, Taiwan's tae-kwondo community is regrouping and preparing again for battle.