Un Yong Kim, Founding President of World Taekwondo Passes Away

SEOUL, Korea (Oct. 3, 2017) – Dr. Un Yong Kim, founding president of World

Taekwondo and former vice president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

passed away on October 3. He was 86 years old.

In 1971, Kim was elected president of the Korean Taekwondo Association. In 1972, he

founded the Kukkiwon to operate as a brick-and-mortar "Mecca" for global

taekwondo training and grading in Seoul’s Gangnam district. In 1973, he became the

founding president of the newly inaugurated World Taekwondo Federation, or WTF.

(Today, World Taekwondo, or WT.) The federation held the first World Taekwondo

Championships at the Kukkiwon in 1973.

Under Kim’s stewardship, taekwondo unified and systemized domestically;

internationally, its profile rose. It was a demonstration sport at the 1988 Seoul

Olympics and 1992 Barcelona Olympics – indeed, the mass demonstration during

the opening ceremony of 1988 Seoul Olympics became iconic worldwide – and

became a program sport in 2000 in Sydney – where Kim also played a key role

organizing the joint march-in of South and North Korean athletes.

In addition to his role as a taekwondo administrator, Kim was an International

Olympic Committee (IOC) board member and served as president of the General

Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF), the Korean National

Olympic Committee and president of the 2002 Pusan Asian Games Organizing

Committee. He was the most prominent figure in sports.

He is survived by his wife, son and two daughters.

As a service to our readers, Around the Rings will provide verbatim texts of selected press releases issued by Olympic-related organizations, federations, businesses and sponsors.

These press releases appear as sent to Around the Rings and are not edited for spelling, grammar or punctuation.

25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is www.aroundtherings.com, for subscribers only