2nd Korean Fair Play Awards Ceremony

Held in Seoul

Star Vika Inspires Ukraine’s Para-Taekwondo Athletes

The Korean Fair Play Committee (KFPC), headed by World Taekwondo (WT) President Chungwon Choue, held its first Korean Fair Play Award ceremony in Seoul, Korea on Nov. 21, 2007.

The awards ceremony took place at the Olympic Parktel in Seoul, drawing hundreds of sports figures.

In the men’s individual division, Song Jin-woo, a pitcher of the Hanwha Eagles professional baseball club, earned the honors as the winner of the 2007 Korean Fair Play Award. The honors in the women’s individual category went to Chun Joo-weon, a guard of the Shinhan Bank Sbirds women’s basketball team.

The Korean national men’s and women’s basketball teams shared the 2007 Korean Fair Play Award in the team division, while Kim Kuntae, referee manager of the Korean Volleyball Federation and a FIVB referee, won the honors in the special prize division.

A seven-member KFPC Screening Committee selected the 2007 Korean Fair Play prizewinners after strict selection sessions, mainly based on the applicants’ outstanding examples of fair play attitude and good sportsmanship in sports. The committee’s conviction is to regard fairness as more important than winning at all costs.

As part of its efforts to promote the spirit of fair play and sportsmanship in the Korean sports community, the KFPC, which was inaugurated in 2006, presents Korean Fair Play awards annually starting in 2007. Chungwon Choue, president of WT, was nominated as the first president of the KFPC in its inaugural General Assembly in Seoul on Sept. 26, 2006.

The KFPC then recommended the prizewinners as the Korean candidates for the World Fair Play Prizes for the year 2007, which was organized by the International Fair Play Committee (IFPC).

The Korean Fair Play Committee (KFPC), led by World Taekwondo (WT) President Chungwon Choue, held its second Korean Fair Play Award ceremony in Seoul, Korea on Nov. 20, 2008.

The awards ceremony was held at the Olympic Parktel in Seoul, with the attendance of hundreds of sports figures.

A six-member KFPC Screening Committee selected the 2008 Korean Fair Play prizewinners after strict selection sessions, mainly based on the applicants’ outstanding examples of fair play attitude and good sportsmanship in sports.

In the men’s individual division, Lee Bae-young, the silver medalists in the weightlifting at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, earned the honors as the recipient of the 2008 Korean Fair Play Award. The honors in the women’s individual category went to Dang Yea Seo, the bronze medalist in the women’s team table tennis at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

The Doosan Bears, a Korean professional baseball team, and the Korean national women’s basketball team won the honors in the men’s and women’s team division, respectively. In the special prize division, Park Jong-chul, a disabled weightlifter, and the Jeonnam Sports Association shared the honors.

“To instill Olympic ideals of friendship, solidarity and fair play in youth is one way to enhance the educational value of sports,” said KFPC President Choue in his welcome speech at the awarding ceremony.

Dr. Choue said, “To attain that goal, IOC President Jacques Rogge proposed the creation of Youth Olympic Games and the proposed 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games will serve as a good opportunity for youth to share friendship and solidarity, as well as learn more about fair play spirit and peace.”

Vika Marchuk of Ukraine, who was born with severely disabled arms, was abandoned as a baby and raised in an orphanage, suffering a hard life before being discovered by Taekwondo coach Yuliya Volkova. Marchuk, previously a track and field athlete, was raised to championship level by Volkova’s patient coaching.

In 2012 it all came together. Marchuk – better known simply as Vika - grabbed gold at the 3rd World Para-Taekwondo Championships in Santa Cruz, Aruba, that year.

In 2013, she repeated the feat at the 4th championships in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Marchuk’s story – a combination of tough life, fairy godmother coach and bravura performance in elite global competition - captured the hearts of the global Taekwondo community.

So, what was the legacy of those championship wins?

“I think my success in the world championships showed other people that regardless of whether you are healthy or have a disability, you can have success if you work hard,” said Marchuk, who also received an apartment and a small stipend from a grateful government.

For Moscow 2014, Ukraine fielded a five-strong team, and some of the athletes admitted that the smiling teammate they train alongside was an inspiration.

“I am in training together with Vika – the same dojang, the same coach,” said 15-year-old Oksana Hrankina. “I see how big and how strong her spirit is; it is a big motivation for me to get stronger to get the same success.”

It is not just athletes who learned of Vika’s story and took action.

“In our country, people with disabilities are not like others, they are second-class citizens,” said Team Ukraine’s male team coach Serhiy Brushnitskyy. “I was thinking of working with such people after Vika’s success. People with disabilities are strong enough; I am proud to work with people with disabilities in Ukraine.”

And however serious social prejudices against the disabled may be in Ukraine, being a world-class para-athlete has granted many a sense of self-worth and dignity.

Vika was the first Para Taekwondo athlete in any post-Soviet country to receive the Merited Master of Sport award .

A Para Taekwondo pioneer, Marchuk has seen international success since shortly after the sport was developed.

In 2019, she won all seven of her events, including a record-setting sixth world crown and a fifth European title.

Her storied career and contributions to the development of the sport in Ukraine are what prompted the Ukrainian government to grant its most prestigious sports award to a Para Taekwondo player for the first time.

‘Meditation in Action’

Poomsae - solo form routines - was a new addition at the 2014 championships. The discipline offers unique benefits to the intellectually disabled

Anyone doubting the transformative potential of para-Taekwondo should speak to Irma Cordoba.

“ When you work with love, perseverance and interest, Taekwondo accomplishes great things,” said the Colombian mother, speaking in a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of her daughter, Jhormary. “Through Taekwondo, Jhormary has changed in unimaginable ways - including aspects of her life that medical therapies had not been able to overcome.”

Cordoba was speaking on the sidelines of the 5th World Para-Taekwondo Championships on June 21-22, 2014 in Moscow, Russia, just after her daughter, Jhormary Rojas, 32, had delivered an impressive performance in poomsae competition – a subcategory of Taekwondo added to the championships for the first time in Moscow for those with intellectual disabilities.

If kyorugi (sparring) is the “martial” side of Taekwondo, poomsae is the “art.” Athletes are required to perform a series of pre-choreographed, solo, set movements –“poomsae” - against an imagined opponent.

The moves range from the simple – a chest-level punch – to the challenging – a head-level side kick. Poomse is graded to various levels of difficulty and in competition, athletes are graded on components such as movement correctness, precision and grace. While poomsae lacks the impact of kyorugi, it promotes concentration, balance, agility, flexibility and leg strength.

“Poomsae is meditation in action,” said Sergey Proskurnev, chairman of Russia’s Poomsae Referee Committee. “It is really good, both mentally and physically.”

Poomsae is a demanding discipline even for those with normal memories and motor coordination.

Imagine, then, how much more challenging it is for the intellectually disabled – the category Jhormary was competing in. Add in impassive judges, a huge hall, fierce fighting underway on the adjacent matt and a noisy crowd - and the stress factors ramp up.

This did not stop four intellectually impaired athletes from competing in the event.

On the 21st, they marched to the competition mat, bowed in, performed their poomsae, bowed out and marched off. Their results appeared on electronic scoreboards.

Colombia’s Rojas was the only competitor to display two different poomsae; she also chose the most advanced patterns seen in the competition, Taebaek and Shipjin. Her performances were authoritative, displaying long, low stances and a clear expression of power that shook her dobok (uniform).

Watching Rojas’ performance, one would be hard pressed to tell that she was in any way disabled. She ended with an overall score of 7.265.

Austrian Dominick Radosztics, 20, performed Taeguk 1-jang, Taekwondo’s most basic poomsae. The nine-year Taekwondo veteran gave a performance that showcased careful, deliberate concentration and finished with a sharp “kihap” (spirit shout). He repeated the form a second time, ending with a combined score of 5.400.

Russia’s Sergey Kiselov, 23, performed Kumgang Palchang. The poomsae is characterized by stance shifts, straight palm strikes and balance-challenging onelegged stances.

‘Gasoline for Life:’ Danish Champ Retains Title in Trail-by-Fire Finale

Lisa Gjessing lost an arm to cancer in 2012, but now reckons she is happier than she was prior to the amputation. How so? Well … being a world para-Taekwondo champion has something to do with it.

The 35-year old Dane boasts the svelte physique of an elite-level athlete and the sculpted Nordic facial features that modelling agencies would kill for. She is successful both professionally – she is a state prosecutor – and personally – she is married with two children, aged five and eight.

But cancer is no respecter of looks or position: In 2009, Gjessing was diagnosed with the disease.

“It was a big shock,” she said. Gjessing underwent various treatments and in 2012, her lower left arm was amputated. The trauma forced some introspection, and she decided to return to an old love.

Before her illness, Gjessing had practiced Taekwondo, competing at the 2001 and 2003 World Championships. But in 2004, she had given up the practice, partly due to familial and educational commitments, and partly due to failing the 2004 Olympic qualifications. Fast forward to 2012, and while she was in rehab, she saw something that inspired.

“I saw the Paralympics in London a few months after my amputation, and I thought, ‘How can I feel sorry for myself, when they can do all this?’” she recalled.

She contacted her former coach Bjarne Johansen. After an eightyear layoff, Gjessing got back into training. “Johansen had an elite Taekwondo center and his guys were on a high level,” she said.

“But I found I could still kick.”

Just a month and a half later, she entered the (able-bodied) National Championships and won in her class. “That felt really good,” she recalled, and started intensive training for the World Para-Taekwondo Championships in 2013.

In Lausanne, she took home the gold.

That win, plus her previous experience in able-bodied Taekwondo, gives her a unique vantage point from which to judge the two formats.

Para-Taekwondo has removed the crowd-pleasing head kicks which tend to be lateral; this makes it more linear, with more backand-forth movement, she said. She was also surprised that (at least in the women’s categories) there was as wide a pool of opponents as in able-bodied. She will stick with the para-format.

“From now on, I’m only doing para-Taekwondo, I am not going back to able-bodied,” she said. “With work and kids, I don’t want to fight with head contact.”

In 2014 in Moscow, having trained six days a week for months in the run-up she was in tigerish condition to defend her title. Her first two matches were a cruise. Against relatively inexperienced opposition, she won 16-0 and 12-0; both fights were – prudently - stopped by the judges. The situation presented Gjessing with an issue. “I felt I should have been more gentle with them, I want them to be up and coming as want more competitors!” she said. “It is a dilemma.”