Maldives Join the Family as MNA 212th

The World Taekwondo Council today confirmed during an Extraordinary Meeting that Maldives has become the 212th member of the World Taekwondo family.

“We are delighted to welcome Maldives as our newest MNA,” said WT President Chungwon Choue,

The WT Council’s hybrid meeting was held ahead of the World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Goyang, Korea.

With COVID-19 having wrecked two years of events, the championships are being hosted in-person for the first time since 2018 . As the largest ever, they will showcase the growth of Poomsae over the past four years.

“World Taekwondo has been proactively expanding the number of disciplines and events in our sport, to provide more opportunities for our MNAs to earn medals and promote Taekwondo more widely around the world,” Choue said. “We have more weight categories, team and mixed team events, and Para Taekwondo.”

The federation is now focusing on the non-combat format of Poomsae.

“We need to build on this foundation and the World Championships here in Goyang will showcase this great discipline to an even wider audience,” he said.

Also during the meeting, the Council aapproved the rescheduling of the selection of the host city for the 2023 World Taekwondo Championships to May 12 to allow more time for applications.

Russia had previously expressed in- terest in hosting the event, however, following the sanctions World Taekwondo imposed on that country due to the war in Ukraine, Russia can no longer be considered for the event. In other business, the Council approved amendments to a number of its statutes, and an enactment to its Para Taekwondo Standing Procedures for Paralympic Regional Games to help standardise the competition and qualification system.

The Council also passed amendments to competition rules to ensure more dynamic and engaging competitions.

Several amendments to Para Taekwondo competition rules were also approved to ensure better alignment with the competition rules of able-bodied Taekwondo.