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 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,”