TAEKWON-DO IN SRI LANKA

Taekwon-Do started in Sri Lanka in 1970's. From that year there were few associations that conducted the classes. However now there are three main federations in Sri Lanka. That is GTF, ITF & WTF Federations.

On 9612.09 the Hon. Minister of sports dissolved the Sri Lanka Taekwon-Do federation and appointed an Interim Board to conduct the Taekwon-Do Sport in Sri Lanka. Up to 1999 that interim board continues it's work to promote Taekwon-Do sport in Sri Lanka. The Board members consisted of GTF, ITF and WTF Taekwon-Do Sri Lanka Representitives. So They work very hard to promote TAEKWON_DO in Sri Lanka conducting Seminars, training, Tournaments. They worked with Korean Embassy officials as well promote this.

During this time Interim board members constructed a Taekwon-Do hall inside the Sports Ministry premises with donated funds from the Korean Embassy. GTF, ITF and WTF members participated at the opening ceremony. And worked together and consists the very good teams.

How ever in 1999 the minister of sports dissolved the Interim board and appointed a new interim Board. That was very biased to one particular federation. Two board members were from one federation and others were NON TAKWON-DO PEOPLES. There were no members of the rest of the other federations.

After 1999 there were several Taekwon-Do tournaments Organized and conducted by the Interim Board which were not informed to the public. They didn’t call the applications from the media. They selected competitors from very small group and they conducted the tournaments. And some times they were mentioned only this federation can apply. So Ministry of sports must be supervising what the Interim Board is doing.

Interim Board encourage the other Taekwon-Do students to take part in the tournaments. Taekwon-Do origined as a Martial art. However Sport or Martial art the responsibility of the Ministry is to supervise the interim board activities. They organized another tournament in 2002 October 31 but the interim board did not advertise in the any media to apply this.

Regarding this SLGTF wrote to Minister of sports about this in 2001 June and 2001 December 19 to solve this problems and appoint the other members to the interim board again. Otherwise nobody can control Taekwon-Do sport in Sri Lanka.

But How ever there is no meeting from the Minister of Sports. First of all must remove the politically appointed members from the Interim board and appoint the other federation leaders to the interim board as earlier.

However GTF is promoting Taekwon-Do as a Martial art all over the Sri Lanka. They were very strong and doing their activities smoothly.