DUSHANBE, March 7, 2011, Asia-Plus  -- Tajik athletes will participate at the WTF World Taekwondo Championships that will take place in South Korea from April 25 to May 6 this year, Jaloliddin Nourov, an aide to the chairman of the Committee for Youth, Sports and Tourism Affairs, told Asia-Plus today.

“Nashiddin Vorisov, Farhod Nematov, Kristina Korobko and Alisher Gulov will represent Tajikistan at the championships in South Korea,” Nourov said, noting that Tajik national team is headed by coach Juh Juhg Hu (phonetically spelled).

Taekwondo is a Korean martial art and the national sport of South Korea.  There are two branches of taekwondo development: Traditional taekwondo; and Sport taekwondo.  According to Wikipedia, Sport taekwondo is in turn subdivided into two main styles; one them is governed by the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and the other comes from the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF).

WTF is the International Federation (IF) member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the competition events of the martial art of taekwondo.  WTF was established in South Korea on May 28, 1973, at its inaugural meeting held at the Kukkiwon with participation of 35 representatives from the world.  Since 2000, Taekwondo (WTF) has been one of only two Asian martial arts (the other being judo) that are included in the Olympic Games; it became a demonstration event starting with the 1988 games in Seoul, and became an official medal event starting with the 2000 games in Sydney. In 2010, Taekwondo was accepted as a Commonwealth Games sport.