태권도가 지니고 있는 무도와 스포츠 요소의 비교

Abstract

This study focused on discussing sports aspects of Taekwondo in relation to martial arts, and dealing with sportsmanship of Taekwondo in comparison between Taekwondo match (under rules of match) and martial implications of Taekwondo (essential values). Based on such a comparison, this study sought to find out ultimate values of Taekwondo in essence. Indeed, martial aspects of Taekwondo have changed into sport match, which implies that sport-like Taekwondo may undermine traditional virtue and strength of Taekwondo as a sort of martial arts. This crisis is demonstrated by many sites of Taekwondo match. Immoral actions appearing in Taekwondo arena often reveal unfamiliar situations that seldom come up in other sport events. Surely, Taekwondo is a sport event that has a great potential of model sportsmanship cases as compared to other sport events, but fails to take any advantage of such a potential. It is unfortunate that failure of Taekwondo to show model cases of sportsmanship is not helpful to develop Taekwondo at all even due to its devalued martial aspects and immoral affairs. Nevertheless, Taekwondo has been formulated as a sport event under a system of sport rules, so that its match rules have developed in parallel with remarkable change of conventional training system based mainly on drill. Traditional Korean Taekwondo focused on drills of blow to exert power, tenacity and strong deathblow (home thrust). But its evolution into a martial sport event has involved quick shift of offense and defense as well as a variety of kicks. That is, traditional fighting and threatening nature of Taekwondo has been refined into a sportsmanship of martial skill match under a series of rules. As a result, Taekwondo has been re-highlighted as non-dangerous martial sport and has evolved into an exciting sport of fight match between two players. Modern system of Taekwondo has contributed significantly to global propagation of Taekwondo. Modern sport system of Taekwondo can give a vicarious satisfaction to spectators in the sense that it requires wearing protection gear before expressing desires of aggression to the allowable extent under sport-like rules, and also gives a justifiable and fair chance to have a match with counterpart. Indeed, successful evolution of Taekwondo into modern sport becomes a major contributor to successful global popularization of Taekwondo. In past, tedious self-training and drill and adventurous match without protection gear in the situation of man-to-man fight were disadvantages of traditional Taekwondo's martial arts. Besides, they involve potential risks of injury and damage, causing delayed development of Taekwondo. But protection gear has been introduced into Taekwondo along with firsthand blows between a pair of players within a limited space of standard dimensions, so the proven values of Taekwondo in the aspect of martial sport have contributed to its global popularization.