Korean Kazakh promotes peace thru taekwondo
An ethnic Korean taekwondo athlete from Kazakhstan has joined a campaign to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula through sports.
Ilya Hwang, a third-generation Korean, held a unified Korean flag bearing the image of the Korean Peninsula in blue against a white background when he won third place at the ITF World Championship last month.
Hosted by the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF), the ITF World Taekwondo Championship 2019 took place from Aug. 24 to 30 in Plodiv, Bulgaria.
The athletes competed in junior, adult and veteran levels depending on their age. Each age bracket had several competitions, including bouts and demonstration of technical skills and patterns.
Hwang, 28, competed in the technical skills category.
Hwang’s celebration was inspired by another Kazakh taekwondo athlete Svetlana Kang.
Kang, in her 40s, held a unified Korean flag last year in celebration of winning the gold medal in the women’s pattern demonstration category at ITF Taekwondo World Championships in Minsk, Belarus.
In January, she organized a forum called “Wishing for the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula through sports” in Almaty, Kazahkstan.
“I am so happy to follow in the footsteps of Kang and join a campaign for peace on the peninsula accordingly,” Hwang said.
Meanwhile, Kang said she began her campaign last year also as part of efforts to bring together the two world governing bodies of taekwondo — the ITF and World Taekwondo (WT).
Both federations originated from Seoul.
The ITF has developed close relations with Pyongyang, after its founder Choi Hong-hi moved to Canada in the 1960s as a political exile.
The ITF and the WT had both insisted they were the only international governing body and had refused to recognize each other.
Prompted by cross-border reconciliation, they agreed last year to form a joint committee as a step to integrate the sport.