Eastern world has enormously contributed to the world of fighting sports with its cultural richness of various martial arts. Chinese and Japanese variants of martial arts like Karate, Judo and Kung-Fu are being practiced by many nations across the world. In spite of its rich history, the Korean martial arts like Taekkyeon or Gwonbeop were endangered upon the dawn of the Confucianism era.
By the midst of the 19th century, when Japan left Korea after losing the war, the nine original Kwans were granted freedom to further improve their studies in the Korean Martial Arts. General Choi Hong Hi of South Korea expressed enormous interest in reviving it by incorporating them in the standard military practices. Over the time, he coined the term Taekwondo for modern usage and founded his own international body of organization called the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF).
Speed is more important than mass
When Taekwondo was being practiced in the Kwans, it was being developed as anonymous martial arts that unified the Okinawan or Shotokan Karate along with the studied moves of ancient Taekkyeon. The unarmed methods of Gwonbeop served a big inspiration that eventually caused Taekwondo itself to be entirely unarmed. It was ultimately composed of high flying kick attacks and maneuvers.
General Hong had been conducting research on the laws of Physics to help improve the techniques used in Taekwondo. He discovered that the effect of a move depends mainly on the speed at which it is impacted rather than the mass involved in the impact.This observation led Taekwondo to become a blazing sport that involved agile fighters who delivered twirling kicks and stunning knock-outs.