WTF President Chungwon Choue appointed Mr. Phillip Walter Coles, president of the Oceania Taekwondo Union and Australian member of the International Olympic Committee, as a vice president of the WTF on Feb. 4, 2008.

Under the WTF Rules and Regulations, the WTF has six vice presidents. Of the six, three are elected at the General Assembly and another three are appointed by the WTF president.

Since March 14, 2007, a vice-president position has been vacant, following the death of Dr. Cha Sok Park, who was a vice president of the WTF and president of the Pan American Taekwondo Union. Mr. Coles, is serving the remainder of the late Dr. Park’s four-year term until the WTF’s next General Assembly in 2009.

As the fifth continental union of the WTF, the Oceania Taekwondo Union was established on July 16, 2005 in Sydney, Australia, with the initial 10 member nations. Mr. Coles has since served as the first president of the Oceania Taekwondo Union. The Oceania Taekwondo Union now has 13 member nations.

As recently as Jan. 10, 2008, Mr. Coles visited the headquarters of the WTF to attend the Joint Meeting of Continental Unions.

In an effort to improve media exposure of taekwondo, the WTF has started developing its own Web TV site and now its effort is about to bear a fruit.

The WTF Taekwondo Web TV now test-runs at www.wtf-taekwondo.tv, where you can watch matches of the 2007 WTF World Taekwondo Qualification Tournament for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games held in Manchester, England, in September last year, and the recent

European Qualification Tournament in Istanbul, Turkey.

The videos are featured with graphical reinforcement and state-of-the-art technologies, such as “tagging” which marks the moment when each player gains a point or a warning.

This feature is sure to help more people better understand and enjoy the sport as well as serve as a useful tool with which athletes and coaches can analyze their own play and compare with those of others.

A lack of exposure of the sport on TV has been pointed out as a weakness in the sports community.

To deal with the problem, the WTF worked out an efficient and economic solution using high-quality fixed-type cameras along with high-tech features for sport video analysis. All the video feeds produced on the site can be used when a judging protest is raised.

On top of that, the new taekwondo media is also expected to serve as a useful marketing tool helping the WTF get greater value of sponsorship and attracting advertisers, therefore creating revenues.

You can visit the site and enjoy breathtaking moments of the matches of your favorite players. Additional events and exciting functionalities to further enrich the experience of fans, teams, coaches and athletes will be added during the coming months.

Host Turkey earned four berths for the taekwondo competition at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games after two days of the 2008 WTF European Taekwondo Qualification Tournament, which concluded on Jan. 27, 2008 in Istanbul, Turkey.

European taekwondo powers Spain and Germany clinched three places each for the Beijing Olympic Games, while Great Britain, Greece and Sweden won two tickets each through the two-day event.

Eight countries grabbed one ticket each through the qualifier for the Beijing Olympic Games. They are Portugal, Azerbaijan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Croatia, Israel and Norway.

Through the European qualifier, a total of 14 countries in Europe earned 24 tickets. Given the results of the 2007 WTF World Taekwondo Qualification Tournament in September 2007 in Manchester, England, 15 European countries clinched 32 berths for the Beijing Olympic Games.

A total of 128 athletes are scheduled to compete in the taekwondo competition of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, during which two bronze medals in each weight categories will be awarded for the first time. Twenty-six international referees officiated the event and there was only one protest throughout the two-day tournament.

The European qualifying event took place at the Ahmet Comert Sport Hall in downtown Istanbul, which drew 131 athletes, including 56 females, from 43 countries in Europe.

Among participating countries were Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece and Hungary. The others were Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.

The opening day of the two-day event featured four weight categories: the men’s -58kg, the men’s -80kg, the women’s -49kg and the women’s -67kg, while the second day featured another four weight divisions: the men’s -68kg, the men’s +80kg, the women’s -57kg and the women’s +67kg.

The competition results of the European qualifying event are as follows:

In the men’s -58kg category, Pedro Miguel Moreira Povoa of Portugal placed first, while Tyrone Robinson of Great Britain finished second and Juan Antonio Ramos Sanchez of Spain placed third.

In the men’s -68kg division, Servet Tazegul of Turkey placed first, while Daniel Manz of Germany and Dennis Bekkers of the Netherlands finished second and third, respectively.

Bahri Tanrikuku of Turkey placed first in the men’s -80kg division, while Azerbaijan’s Rashad Ahmadov and Great Britain’s Aaron Cook finished second and third, respectively.

In the men’s +80kg category, Spain’s Jon Garcia Aguado came in first, while Italy’s Leonardo Basile and Greece’s Nikolaidis Alexandros placed second and third, respectively.

In the women’s -49kg class, Hanna Zajc of Sweden placed first, while Switzerland’s Manuela Bezzola and Germany’s Sumeyye Gulec finished second and third, respectively.

Croatia’s Martina Zubcic finished first in the women’s -57kg category, while Turkey’s Azize Tanrikulu and Israel’s Bat El Getterer came in second and third, respectively.

In the women’s -67kg division, Turkey’s Sibel Guler came in first, while Greece’s Mystakidou Elisavet and Germany’s Pinar Budak finished second and third, respectively.

In the women’s +67kg category, Spain’s Rosana Simon Alamo finished first, while Sweden’s Karolina Kedzierska and Norway’s Nina Solheim placed second and third, respectively.

The World Taekwondo Federation held a joint meeting of presidents and secretaries general of the WTF Continental Unions, the first of its kind in the WTF’s 35-year history, at the WTF headquarters in Seoul on Jan. 10, 2008.

A day later on Jan. 11, the WTF held its Executive Committee Meeting, the third of its kind.

The Joint Meeting of Continental Unions drew all the presidents and secretaries general of the WTF’s five Continental Unions. Mr. Ji Ho Choi of the United States attended the meeting in his capacity as the president of the Pan American Taekwondo Union. He was elected PATU president last December.

At the meeting, participants adopted a recommendation, which called for the creation of an ad-hoc committee to review the WTF Competition Rules and Standing Procedures of the taekwondo competitions at the Olympic Games, including the feasibility of having the WTF World Taekwondo Championships that is held one year prior to the Olympic Games serve as the WTF World Qualification Tournament for the Olympic Games.

The participants also called for an immediate creation of an ad-hoc Investigation Committee to conduct a thorough probe of rumors and allegations as well as the sources levied against WTF President Chungwon Choue and WTF Secretary General Jin Suk Yang.

Based on the Committee's investigation results, the participants urged that the WTF should take strong legal action against those who made malicious, intentional allegations and rumors.

The meeting gave permission to introduce the electronic trunk protector system for trial testing in the respective Continental Union championships, after which the Continental Unions will report the evaluation results to the WTF.

The joint meeting recommended that an ad-hoc committee, comprising of the presidents of the Continental Unions, be formed to study the feasibility of an individual membership system.

It also called on Mr. Jean Marie Ayer, former CEO of Dartfish, to contact the International Olympic Committee regarding the proposal to create a WTF Web TV and improve the WTF newsletter.

Evaluating the Joint Meeting “a great success,” the WTF decided to hold the Joint Meeting of Continental Unions on a regular basis, prior to the WTF Council meeting and General Assembly.

“We, the WTF, are not operated by the Secretariat alone. It is through our joint efforts that the WTF thrives in today’s society,” said WTF President Chungwon Choue at the Joint Meeting. “I ask that you lay your views openly for our joint discussion. Only through open dialogue, we will be able to eradicate the misleading, even malicious rumors that are aimed at undermining our efforts to enhance the status of the WTF.”

He continued to say, “Moving on, taekwondo’s popularity is on the rise, and for this reason, I propose organizing the World Cup Taekwondo Team Championships every two years. The WTF has already sent official letters to the member national associations to submit their hosting applications for the 2009 edition of the championships until the end of January. The host city of the World Cup Taekwondo Team Championships will be decided at the upcoming General Assembly in Izmir, Turkey, in May 2008.”

WTF President Choue said, “I will form an ad-hoc committee to review our Competition Rules. This review is necessary to make taekwondo more exciting and relevant in today’s society. Tradition and progress should come hand in hand, not one over the other.” “I will also ask the ad-hoc committee to review the possibility of combining the Standing Procedure for the Olympic Games into the Competition Rules,; this is to eliminate any potential confusion and contradiction by having only one definitive document for the rules governing its competitions,”

It was one of the most special, moving and splendid events of taekwondo ever held. A group of athletes with disabilities performed a special taekwondo demonstration during a Moroccan national competition titled "Championship of the Champions" held at Ibn Yassine Stadium in Rabat, Morocco, on Jan. 19, 2008.

A four-member team performed the demonstration of both Poomsae, or fixed

taekwondo movements, and Gyeorugi, or sparring, including a series of breakings as well as a short play showing how they defended themselves against gangsters by using taekwondo.

With the attendance of WTF President Chungwon Choue, two members of the group, a blind man, and a boy without arms, read out a message of hope and showed what they are capable of doing through taekwondo.

One of the most moving moments was when a blind athlete jump-kicked to scroll down a banner that reads "Overcome Your Handicap and Practice Sport. Go for It!!!"

Their performance not only represented diverse aspects of the sport, but also epitomized how the sport can help them "overcome the handicap" in terms of self-disciplining, helping each other, and protecting themselves with self-defense.

The event was in line with the WTF’s commitment to ensure more of the people with disabilities will practice the sport and be benefited from it.

As part of its efforts to promote taekwondo, the WTF has put top priority on promoting taekwondo among practitioners with disabilities.

To translate its commitment into action, the WTF has taken a series of measures. It sent a letter in June 2006 to the president of the International Paralympic Committee asking for his help in including the sport of taekwondo in the official program of the Paralympic Games, and on July 25, 2006, the WTF General Assembly approved the creation of the WTF Paralympic Committee in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Following the approval, the WTF held its first Paralympic Committee meetings on Nov. 13-14, 2006, at the headquarters of the WTF in Seoul.

There were demonstrations by taekwondo practitioners with disabilities during the opening ceremony of the 1st WTF World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Seoul, Korea on Sept. 4, 2006, and during the opening ceremony of the 18th WTF Taekwondo World Championships held in May 2007 in Beijing, China.